Evaluating First of a Kind (FOAK) Investment Performance of 25 Leading Climate Investors

This report evaluates the performance of First-of-a-Kind (FOAK) climate-infrastructure projects backed by a curated alliance of 25 leading climate-tech investors who are part of the All Aboard Fund Co-investment Network.  

From a dataset of 70 FOAK or FOAK-adjacent financings since 2014, the analysis identifies 16 FOAK rounds where three or more of these 25 investors co-participated, revealing a striking pattern of outperformance compared with the wider FOAK landscape.  This 25-firm network has collectively supported companies that have gone on to bring multiple up-rounds, commercial plant deployments, major federal grants and loan guarantees, strong industrial offtake agreements, and valuations frequently reaching unicorn status, even as FOAK projects more broadly face high attrition. The 25-firm network, shaped through years of due diligence and selected by the All Aboard team for their deep technical expertise and collaborative track records, appears to act as a powerful early indicator of FOAK success. For the subset of FOAK investment rounds where we found sufficient data, estimated unrealised performance averaged 2.4X MOIC and 41% IRR within just a few years of the FOAK round. Overall, the findings suggest that FOAK rounds syndicated across this investor cohort—and even earlier pre-FOAK rounds where these investors cluster—offer highly compelling signals for identifying the most scalable and commercially resilient climate-tech companies.