Expert voices: Galvanize's Saloni Multani on climate deals

"Capital is aligning for a decarbonized future," Saloni Multani, co-head of venture and growth for Galvanize Climate Solutions, tells Axios.

Why she matters: Multani, who was CFO for Joe Biden's presidential campaign, helps lead Tom Steyer's new billion-dollar fund for climate-tech startups, particularly companies using software across sectors like agriculture, energy and carbon accounting.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

What was the biggest news in climate investing this month?

• "Your story about growth deals picking up amid the much-lamented lack of growth-equity funding.
• My takeaway from that is that large-scale climate-transition deals are getting done, and capital is aligning towards a decarbonized future."

What would you add to the narrative?

• "I would add that decarbonization is enabled by digitally enabled foundations, and ultimately expressed in our physical world.
• Climate-tech venture, yes, but also growth equity, project capital, infrastructure funding, government grants and loans, supplier and customer financing, and offtake. Putting that suite of things together is all necessary to build durable, scalable businesses in climate."

What's going undernoticed?

• "We have so many better, faster, cheaper and greener solutions across industries. But the challenge is deployment. Just overcoming the inertia of inaction, which expresses itself as high customer-acquisition costs.
• Those costs are coming way down as climate awareness, power prices and heat waves go up.
• And regulation is a tailwind here, too. SB 253 and SB 261 will be signed imminently by the California governor; CSRD is being implemented in Europe.
• These mandates for climate disclosure about both emissions and broader climate risks will be instrumental in moving us towards high-integrity, globally scaled measurement and transparency, which are critical predecessors to action."

One tip for climate-tech investors or founders:

• "I would ask where we have superior green technology, investigate why it's not everywhere. Target those incumbent economy bottlenecks and build from there."

Four fun things:

💼 First job: "Retail at Express."

👑 Proudest investment: "The energy that has gone into and continues to be spent on building Galvanize and our range of investments to date, including companies with value propositions that address some of our biggest emissions wedges and resilience challenges."

🤦 Facepalm investment: "Watching my dad, who had zero experience with the capital markets, put too much of our very modest savings into Excite@Home on a high-conviction tip from a friend, not long before it filed for bankruptcy. It made me a fundamentals diligence-driven investor for life."

💡 In three-ish words, the change you would make to climate-tech investing: "Level the playing field."