Why Toniic members invested in Superorganism

Nature Is the World’s Largest Unpriced Risk

Modern economies are built on nature, yet systematically ignore it.

Over half of global GDP (roughly $58 trillion) depends directly on healthy ecosystems. Biodiversity underpins food systems, material supply chains, climate regulation, water security, and where and how we live. And yet, over the last 50 years, wildlife populations have declined by nearly 70%, even as carbon emissions surged and economic output expanded. Nature loss has quietly become one of the largest unpriced risks in the global economy.

For too long, our global economic system has pitted economic progress against the natural world: when one wins, the other loses. While billions have flowed into climate tech to reduce emissions, technology to support biodiversity (the living fabric that makes climate stability, agriculture, and resilient cities possible) has remained fragmented, underfunded, and misunderstood as an investable category.

That gap is no longer tenable.

Regulatory pressure is mounting, with tens of thousands of the world’s largest companies now required to measure and disclose their impacts on nature through the EU’s EUDR and CSRD. Meanwhile, over 730 organizations with $22T under management have voluntarily adopted the recommendations of the Taskforce on Nature-Related Financial Disclosures. Supply chains are being reshaped by resource scarcity, ecosystem collapse, and rising compliance costs. At the same time, breakthroughs in AI, remote sensing, genomics, robotics, and biomanufacturing have made it possible to measure, model, and restore nature in ways that simply weren’t feasible a decade ago.

The problem is not a lack of solutions, it’s a lack of focused capital, category definition, and investors who understand both venture mechanics and ecological reality. Biodiversity startups have historically been squeezed into climate, ag tech, or sustainability buckets that fail to reflect what they actually do or how they create value.

Superorganism was founded to change that.

A Venture Strategy Built for Biodiversity

Superorganism is the first venture capital firm built explicitly around biodiversity, not as a side effect of climate action, but as a primary investment lens. The fund backs entrepreneurs using new technologies to reshape how business engages with the natural world, proving that ecological resilience and venture-scale returns can be mutually reinforcing.

At the core of Superorganism’s thesis is a simple rejection of the idea that nature and markets must be at odds. Instead, the firm invests in companies that reduce nature loss, restore ecosystems, or make biodiversity legible and actionable for governments and businesses, all while targeting scalable, defensible business models.

The portfolio is deliberately diverse, spanning three core investment themes:

• Extinction Drivers: Startups tackling the root causes of biodiversity loss by reinventing trillion-dollar industries such as agriculture, materials, cities, and consumer goods. This includes companies turning invasive species into valuable products, replacing destructive materials with bio-based alternatives, and redesigning food and land use systems.
• Climate × Biodiversity: Companies operating where climate solutions and ecosystem health intersect — from soil and forest restoration to ocean and wildfire resilience. These businesses leverage the momentum of climate tech while ensuring that decarbonization efforts actively support, rather than harm, living systems.
• Enabling Technologies: Platforms and tools that give conservationists, companies, and governments new capabilities, including nature data infrastructure, AI-driven environmental monitoring, robotics, genomics, and remote sensing. These technologies make nature measurable, investable, and manageable at scale.

Superorganism invests at the pre-seed and seed stage, writing initial checks typically between $250K and $500K. The fund does not aim to lead rounds, but to be a high-conviction partner (what the team calls “the conservationist on the cap table”), bringing deep domain expertise, regulatory insight, and an unmatched network across venture, science, policy, and conservation. Superorganism has already deployed into 20 startups which have gone on to raise over $100M in follow-on capital.

Importantly, Superorganism is not betting on a single regulatory regime, political moment, or industry cycle. Biodiversity loss cuts across sectors and geographies, making for a portfolio that is inherently less exposed to any one policy swing. From software that helps wind farms coexist with bird migration, to invasive-species supply chains endorsed across party lines, the firm is building a showcase portfolio that demonstrates what best-in-class biodiversity companies look like across industries and technologies.

Finally, the fund hard-codes its values into its economics, pledging 10% of carried interest to future conservation efforts. When portfolio companies win, ecosystems do too.

In a world waking up to the reality that nature risk is market risk, Superorganism isn’t waiting for biodiversity to become a trend. It’s helping define the category, and backing the founders ambitious enough to rebuild the economy around a living planet.

Portfolio

Inversa

Inversa tackles one of the most persistent and politically tractable drivers of biodiversity loss: invasive species. The company turns invasive animals like Burmese pythons and lionfish into high-quality leather, creating economic incentives to remove species that devastate native ecosystems. By working with state governments and more than two dozen global brands, Inversa proves that conservation can be embedded directly into supply chains, aligning ecological restoration with commercial demand rather than relying on regulation or philanthropy alone. The result is a business model where protecting ecosystems also reduces regulatory risk and unlocks new, sustainable materials for luxury and fashion markets.

Spoor

Spoor operates at the intersection of biodiversity protection and infrastructure development, using computer vision to track bird movement and migration patterns around wind farms. Its software helps developers like Ørsted minimize harm to local bird populations while navigating strict environmental regulations that can delay or derail renewable energy projects. By reducing wildlife impacts without slowing deployment, Spoor demonstrates how biodiversity-aware technology can accelerate, rather than constrain, the energy transition. This benefits both ecosystems and developers operating in heavily regulated environments.

Cecil

Cecil is building a clearinghouse for geospatial data, for customers looking to answer critical, geospatially informed questions about their supply chains, environmental impacts, and more. With Cecil, the months-long process of accessing geospatial datasets from providers like Planet, IBAT, and Chloris Geospatial can happen in minutes. Cecil also dramatically simplifies the work customers need to do to make these data sets work together, to start getting scientifically defensible conclusions. One use case has been helping organizations measure, manage, and report on their impacts and dependencies on nature to meet disclosure frameworks and regulations mentioned above. By translating these complex ecological data into standardized, decision-ready insights, Cecil enables companies, investors, and conservationists to integrate biodiversity into financial, operational, and policy decisions. The company exemplifies Superorganism’s belief that protecting nature at scale requires not just better intentions, but better systems.

Building the Ecosystem: Superorganism × Toniic

As Superorganism was raising its first fund, it engaged with Toniic, a global community of impact investors, to introduce its biodiversity-first venture strategy to a broader set of aligned LPs. Even before formally working with Toniic, several Toniic members were already investors in the fund, an early indication that the thesis resonated with the community.

Toniic first shared Superorganism with its members through an internal investor call, highlighting the fund’s focus, early traction, and emerging portfolio. Interest from the community quickly deepened, leading Toniic to invite the Superorganism team to pitch the fund directly and engage in live discussion with members.

As momentum continued to build, Toniic facilitated additional conversations to support deeper diligence. This included an LP reference call, where a large investor shared how they evaluated the fund using an institutional-quality diligence process, and an investee reference call, where two Superorganism portfolio companies spoke directly with members about working with the team and the value they bring beyond capital. The format of giving investors multiple, complementary lenses into the fund proved so valuable that it has since been incorporated into Toniic’s fund program for managers with traction.

Together, these touchpoints helped investors move from initial interest to informed conviction. Recordings of the sessions continued to circulate within the community, and several members who engaged after the live calls ultimately decided to invest.

In total, 14 Toniic members became LPs in Superorganism’s first fund, one of the highest levels of participation Toniic has seen for a single fund. For many, the decision reflected not just belief in biodiversity as a category, but confidence in Superorganism’s ability to help define and scale it.

*“This is the first venture fund I’ve seen that’s truly focused on biodiversity. I love the investment thesis, the impact metrics, and how committed the team is — not just to returns, but to conservation and community building.”

• — Toniic member & LP

*“Biodiversity is finally getting the attention it deserves. Climate gets talked about a lot, but we’re really facing a much broader environmental sustainability challenge. This fund brings credibility and focus to an underappreciated area — and that’s where opportunity often lies.”

• — Toniic member & LP

*“Early-stage venture is an incredibly hard game, especially at pre-seed and seed. I invested because I’ve seen what both founders have done in their respective worlds, and I believe they can do this better than most. For me, this was one of my highest-conviction first-time fund investments.”

• — Toniic member & LP

*“What stood out wasn’t just that they were first — it was that they’re making biodiversity a real category. The additionality of backing this team is incredibly high, and being able to watch that category take shape from the front row is meaningful in itself.”

• — Toniic member & LP

Together, Superorganism and Toniic demonstrate how aligned capital, thoughtful diligence, and open community dialogue can accelerate emerging categories. In a space as complex and urgent as biodiversity, collaboration isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s part of the strategy.

To learn more:

Visit Superorganism.com, follow them on LinkedIn here, or subscribe to their Substack here. You can reach the team at hello@superorganism.com.

About Toniic:

Toniic is a global community of private asset owners seeking to steward wealth and use influence to enable a thriving world. Our members — more than 500 high net-wealth individuals, family offices and foundations from more than 25 countries — are active impact investors and philanthropists, for whom Toniic provides education, investment opportunities, impact support, events, and community. Toniic also seeks to build the field of deep impact investing, moving money and mindsets and leading by example.

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Contact Julien Gafarou, Director of Investment Research if you’d like to learn more about the Toniic membership or to share an investment opportunity