Leo Banchik is a Director at Voyager Ventures, a VC focused on early stage climate technology companies creating the foundation of a decarbonized global economy.
How did you get started in climate investing?
I’m an engineer by background and I’ve been working in climate since 2006. I grew up in Las Vegas. My parents are from northern Argentina, and early visits to the region exposed me to poverty and childhood hunger. These experiences profoundly shaped my commitment to making a positive impact. And that was combined with growing up in a very unsustainable city.
In the 1990s, Las Vegas was largely dependent on coal and natural gas, and today natural gas still accounts for over half of Nevada’s electricity generation per the Energy Information Administration, though the state has made significant progress in solar energy adoption. In high school, I watched Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” which, combined with my early love of sci-fi, made me decide I wanted to work on technology for the climate and find a way to make that the focus of my career.
I spent time at the Department of Energy during undergrad. I also spent time at two national labs working on commercializing clean tech. I wanted to be a founder or operator myself, but then cleantech 1.0 busted and I decided to beef up my fundamentals and got my master’s degree and doctorate from MIT. I had a fellowship at the National Science Foundation to pursue new technologies. After grad school, I joined a startup as an operator and the company ended up exiting to a large Swedish industrial conglomerate. Then I went to McKinsey for five years advising incumbents and startups on the energy transition, but primarily working with investors to help them allocate capital into deep-tech sectors including climate, supply chain and robotics.
After a few years, I was ready to transition from advising on capital allocation to deploying it myself. I joined Global Founders Capital as a partner and led their global climate and deep-tech practice. I then joined Voyager to be part of a dedicated climate/deep-tech fund where I could focus exclusively on this mission alongside other investors who share the same conviction.
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What is Voyager’s thesis?
Voyager invests at the pre-seed to Series A stage across North America and Europe. We back hardware and software founders bringing technologies with superior unit economics to market. We’re returns-focused and we rigorously underwrite for team quality, large addressable markets and economic fundamentals before committing capital.
What makes Voyager unique as a climate tech fund?
Three things set us apart. First, our team consists primarily of former founders and operators, and we’re deeply hands-on with our portfolio companies. I don’t believe in writing a check and walking away. This might mean helping founders develop their financial models or prepare board materials. I want to be there as a true partner, taking 11 p.m. calls on a Sunday night if need be and helping them navigate challenges from every angle. That’s embedded in Voyager’s culture.
Second, we’re technically and analytically rigorous. We model exit scenarios for every investment to ensure each has the potential to return meaningful multiples of our fund, and we dive deep into unit economics and revenue forecasting during diligence. I focus on eliminating surprises while also recognizing that rounds move quickly and perfect information is impossible.
Third, we have an extensive network across North America, Europe and beyond that we actively leverage to help founders build their teams, secure customers and access both follow-on equity investors and non-dilutive capital sources.
Why is this cycle of climate investing different from cleantech 1.0 about a decade ago?
The structural reasons for the cleantech 1.0 bust don’t exist today. We’re now on track to exceed the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the urgency is undeniable. But beyond climate imperative and future resilience, many of these technologies are simply better — faster, cheaper and more efficient. The macro conditions have fundamentally shifted: solar, wind and batteries are dramatically cheaper than they were a decade ago.
We’re continuing to ride down those cost and learning curves, enabling entirely new business models and ushering in what many call a new industrial revolution. Electrification drives superior economics versus fossil fuel alternatives. Electrons are fundamentally easier to store and transport than the oil we’ve been extracting and burning for the past century. Electric vehicles, for example, achieve much higher efficiencies than internal combustion engines. Even accounting for grid power sources, well-to-wheel efficiencies are substantially higher for EVs.
At Voyager, we view many of the technologies we invest in as inevitable, not because of climate policy, but because they’re simply better and cheaper technologies. When these startups approach an industrial customer’s procurement team, the value proposition is straightforward: immediate cost savings through superior performance.
In terms of addressing the carbon part of the climate challenge, why has Voyager focused so heavily on carbon reduction instead of capture?
We’re primarily focused on emissions reduction, but we absolutely understand the need for carbon removal as part of the equation. By 2050, we’ll need roughly 10 gigatons per year of carbon removal capacity because full electrification is unlikely across all sectors. Some industries will remain difficult to fully decarbonize and will likely continue using fossil fuels, requiring us to pull greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. Think of our atmosphere like an overflowing bathtub. We need to turn off the tap to stop new water (emissions) from pouring in, but we also need to drain what’s already there. Emissions reduction is turning off the tap. Carbon removal is draining the tub.
Carbon removal has been tricky for us to underwrite as an investable business. At Voyager, we focus on carbon removal technologies that don’t require corporate altruism to succeed. Certain approaches, like direct air capture, though important, rely almost entirely on carbon credits for revenue and remain more expensive per ton of CO2 removed than other technical pathways. The carbon removal companies we’ve backed are able to generate additional revenue streams — whether selling baseload power or improving crop yields — giving them viable unit economics independent of carbon markets.
What are your evaluation criteria for investing in early-stage startups?
My investment approach is two-sided: proactive and reactive. On the proactive side, I maintain a set of theses that I continuously update based on emerging trends, whether that’s shifting macroeconomic conditions or breakthrough developments in the lab. At Voyager, we collectively pursue theses in areas like geothermal, critical minerals, industrial decarbonization and power infrastructure for data centers and AI compute where we see white space or compelling opportunities.
On the reactive side, I stay open to being convinced. If I meet extraordinary founders working in a space I previously dismissed as crowded or short on innovation headroom, I’m willing to change my mind if they can demonstrate something truly differentiated. This happened recently with an investment where I initially thought the market was saturated with low-cost commodity products that worked well enough. But the founder showed me a genuine innovation — a clean-sheet design that fundamentally rethought how these products are manufactured, resulting in better performance and cost — and we ended up investing in the round.
When evaluating any opportunity, I think of each startup like a gem. I’m constantly rotating it to examine different facets and assess how well it’s polished. I’m looking at the balance between risks and strengths from every angle. Sometimes a single flaw outweighs everything else. Other times there are stacked risks and a waterfall of assumptions that all need to hold true. Maybe you need the technology to come down the cost curve, policy support to materialize and customers willing to pay a premium for early iterations. Those stacked dependencies usually make a deal very difficult to advance through our investment committee.
Our core criteria start with team — we need to see exceptional founders with both technical depth and the ability to execute commercially. Beyond that: unit economics need to be advantageous in steady state, ideally offering a green discount versus fossil fuel alternatives. The total addressable market needs to exceed $10 billion. On the tech side, we look for a technology readiness level of at least 3 to 4. We’re not funding science experiments, we’re backing technologies ready for commercial development. And the go-to-market strategy and revenue model need to be well thought through with evidence of early traction.
What do you see as the major trends in climate investing and climate tech more broadly over the next five years?
I see three major trends shaping the next phase of climate tech. First, new technologies enabled by modularity and declining cost curves. Modularity is one of the key reasons solar became the cheapest form of electricity humans have ever produced. It has the ability to mass-manufacture standardized units and deploy them rapidly. We’re now seeing this same approach applied across climate tech. We’re excited about modular approaches to powering data centers, where compact baseload systems can be deployed in years rather than decades and scaled incrementally as demand grows. Modularity is also enabling innovation in critical minerals recovery through copper recycling and e-waste valorization.
The declining cost curves are equally transformative, particularly in batteries. New chemistries like sodium-ion are reducing reliance on lithium, electrochemical refining is improving lithium processing for LFP cathode materials and second-life battery applications are extending the useful life of EV batteries. On the geologic side, companies are adapting drilling techniques from fracking to produce hydrogen or other molecules underground, dramatically reducing the capex of traditional above-ground synthesis.
Second, new sources of project financing and non-dilutive capital to support climate tech startups as they scale from first commercial plant to serial deployment. Access to these capital sources is becoming a key differentiator.
Third, shifting customer bases. It’s not just climate-focused buyers anymore. The Department of Defense is increasingly interested in technologies that happen to have climate benefits — advanced rare earth element refining, next-generation uranium enrichment or distributed energy systems — because they deliver strategic advantages: better performance, lower cost and supply chain resilience. Other industrial sectors are also following suit, adopting these technologies not for sustainability reasons but because they simply work better and offer competitive advantages.