How Will and Jada Smith’s foundation ended up backing a little known energy startup

By Katie Fehrenbacher

As venture capitalists in Silicon Valley double down on finding the next Snapchat, there’s a new type of investor emerging far from Sand Hill Road that appears to be willing to back some of the riskiest tech ideas: philanthropists.

On Tuesday, a little-known, young energy startup called Quidnet Energy announced that it’s raised a small round of seed funding from a combination of investors including the family foundation of celebrity couple Will and Jada Smith, the foundation created by entrepreneur James LeVoy Sorenson, and a new non-profit that has emerged to connect philanthropists, risk-taking entrepreneurs, and early stage startups.

Called the Prime Coalition, the non-profit was created by young MIT hotshot Sarah Kearney, with an idea that foundations could be a brand new, and largely untapped, source of funds to support high risk, but highly-promising, tech ideas that can fight climate change. The Prime Coalition brought the Quidnet investment to the Will and Jada Smith Family Foundation and the Sorenson Impact Foundation, among other individual investors.

The foundations’ support of Quidnet, as well as the non-profit’s existence, were unveiled on Tuesday as part of President Obama’s call to action to encourage more private investors to fund technologies that can fight climate change. Announced in February, Obama’s “Clean Energy Investment Initiative” has a goal to catalyze $2 billion of such funds for these types of mission-driven tech startups.

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