LMI venture fund to back climate modeling software firm

LMI’s venture capital fund has made a second partnership since its inception and this move also will include some financial backing for the identified company.

LMI Ventures will work with and invest in The Climate Service, a provider of analytics software for federal agencies to use in modeling climate risks and financial implications of them. Terms of the investment were undisclosed, but LMI Ventures said Wednesday the move is intended to help TCS scale its offerings for meeting customer demand.

At the outset, LMI intends to use the partnership to support its work with the Defense Department secretary’s office on assessing climate risks to the F-35 fighter jet’s operational readiness. That includes the resiliency of installations where the planes reside and mission assurance requirements.

Going forward, LMI aims to help clients use TCS’ Climanomics software to assess the costs of shifting to carbon-neutral or other climate-resilient policies and technologies and physical risks that include odds of storm flooding.

LMI launched the venture capital fund in February and became the latest government contractor to start such an initiative as a way to identify and forge partnerships with commercial companies whose products might be of interest to agency customers.

Not all of LMI Ventures' partnerships with companies have a financial component as the fund has two options. It can either strictly form partnerships with companies whose technologies can be bundled with LMI's services, or capital investments up to and potentially more than $500,000.

The fund’s first partnership with Immuta centered around evaluating the readiness of weapons system. LMI Ventures did not invest in Immuta, but identified that company’s data analytics software as of interest to the Pentagon for use in managing availability, costs, inventory and transactions on equipment.