Banyan Infrastructure lands $25M in Series B funding to unlock capital for renewable infrastructure projects

Despite the Inflation Reduction Act unlocking $369 billion in clean energy funding, investing in complex sustainable infrastructure projects has been hindered by manual and inefficient processes. That’s why one Silicon Valley startup is on a mission to address the critical pain points and unlock capital to support renewable and sustainable infrastructure.

Enter Banyan Infrastructure, a sustainable financing software platform designed to simplify, accelerate, and optimize the financing of sustainable infrastructure across the full life cycle. Banyan Infrastructure solves the critical pain points experienced in complex sustainable infrastructure projects by replacing spreadsheets, emails, and varied documents with digitized loans and workflows in addition to automating data ingestion, risk monitoring, and contractual compliance for each loan, resulting in faster financing and greater capital deployment with more efficiency, scale, and liquidity across the deal lifecycle.

To further grow its platform, Banyan announced today it has raised $25 million in Series B funding led by climate software investment firm Energize Ventures, with participation from new investors SE Ventures and Elemental Excelerator, and existing investors VoLo Earth and Ulu Ventures. The latest round brings the company’s total funding to over $42 million.

In conjunction with the funding, Banyan Infrastructure also announced that Juan Muldoon, partner at Energize, has joined its board of directors.

Founded in 2018 by CEO Will Greene and COO Amanda Li, Banyan’s project finance software enables banks, financiers, and developers to automate and track complex project finance transactions with a unified risk and data management system. Banyan also enables customers to rapidly grow their sustainable infrastructure portfolio and achieve net-zero targets.

Since its inception five years ago, Banyan has experienced 700% year-over-year growth over the past year, securing partnerships with leading customers in infrastructure lending, investing, and development, including SMBC and Standard Solar. The company also recently announced its participation in Elemental Excelerator, a nonprofit with an innovative model for funding climate tech deployment. To date, Banyan is enabling billions of sustainable infrastructure investments across seven countries and thousands of projects.

In a statement, CEO Greene said: “Because standardization is lacking for sustainable technology, risk-averse investors are hesitant to move quickly in this relatively new industry. Our software focuses on reducing transaction costs and increasing transparency to create previously unseen speed and scale of project finance. The support from Energize and our new investors help unlock the rapid deployment of sustainable infrastructure that our planet needs.”

“The deployment of renewable energy assets – from large utility-scale projects to community developments and residential energy efficiency upgrades – requires well-functioning financing mechanisms. There are billions of dollars dedicated to financing the energy transition, but the process of underwriting, reporting, and managing project finance is often complex and inefficient,” said Muldoon. “We believe software holds the key to maximizing investment dollars and unlocking a capital efficiency flywheel, and we’re thrilled to partner with the Banyan team as they build the software platform for financing sustainable infrastructure at scale.”

One of Banyan’s customers, NY Green Bank, a $1 billion sustainable infrastructure investment fund and a division of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, has utilized the company’s software to support its portfolio management activities. With nearly $2 billion in total financial commitments since inception, NY Green Bank manages a sizable portfolio spanning a variety of asset classes and borrower types.

“Renewable energy financing requires a high level of coordination and management across many different stakeholders,” said Lindsay Drogin, Director at NY Green Bank and head of Investment Administration and Portfolio Support. “Banyan’s platform has been a critical tool to streamline our work and has allowed us to operate efficiently while managing risk and compliance. This has become especially important as we’ve grown our portfolio.

“Software is key to making the very nuanced and complex project financing process quicker and more profitable, especially given the unique challenges around financing renewable energy projects,” said Banyan Cofounder and Chief Operations Officer Amanda Li. “These projects are far smaller and more distributed, which can lead to the underwriting and risk management process being too complex, or too unprofitable with current timelines and overhead. Working at Generate Capital, I saw the limitations of the status quo firsthand and it severely limits the growth potential of our industry.”