SIP's Growth

SIP was founded in the summer of 2019 to harness the power of technology to make infrastructure more resilient, sustainable, and inclusive. We set out to advance entirely new approaches to some of the world’s thorniest problems. Back then, our first-principles, thematic approach seemed almost quixotic to some.

What a difference two years makes. In that time, we’ve launched four innovation platforms that leverage technology to reimagine infrastructure. We’re enabling municipalities to deploy inclusive 5G networks. We’re deploying trash-sorting robots to reduce plastic waste in landfills. We’re building a roadway for automated and connected cars that reduces traffic and improves safety. And we’re scaling a groundbreaking virtual power plant to sustain California’s energy grid in times of crisis.

These four platforms — CoFi, Polysift, Cavnue, and Resilia, respectively — prove our founding conviction that infrastructure is evolving from passive, static physical assets to dynamic, technology-enabled solutions. We were once largely alone in that view. Now, many owners and operators of legacy infrastructure — who once thought of tech as a four-letter word — are racing to leverage technology to improve their infrastructure systems. Investors with traditional infrastructure portfolios increasingly recognize the impact of technological disruption on their holdings, and have sought to emulate SIP’s approach to improve — and even risk mitigate — their infrastructure systems. Even the government is catching up: President Biden made future-proofing infrastructure his top domestic priority and signed a bill into law that makes a generational investment in physical infrastructure — and adopts specific policy ideas proposed by I3, the advocacy initiative SIP co-founded to accelerate transformative infrastructure.

Today, it’s widely accepted that technology-enabled infrastructure is its own asset class, with compelling potential returns, and meaningful sustainability impact. And our portfolio is among the most prominent illustrations of the new asset class. Now we have an opportunity to scale and expand our approach, cementing SIP’s leadership position.

We’re thrilled to announce an investment leading SIP’s Series B by StepStone Group, one of the world’s largest private infrastructure investors. StepStone joins Alphabet, a leading technology company, and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, a global infrastructure investor, in backing SIP.

We’re humbled by StepStone’s vote of confidence: they have broad exposure to privately financed infrastructure projects across the world, which informs their confidence in SIP, our mission, and our innovative approach. Critically, StepStone’s investment will help propel the next wave of our work. We’re going to build on the platforms we’ve already launched, and we’ll expand into new categories of infrastructure with the same thematic approach and underlying conviction.

In just two years, what was unconventional has become the vanguard. We’re leaders in a new asset class we helped create, and the prospects for growth and impact are boundless. That’s not just good news for SIP and our partners — it’s good news for anyone who cares about reimagining infrastructure to achieve equity, mitigate climate change, and build stronger communities.