Gaia Sciences Innovation harnesses the expertise of 12 leading research institutions - including the University of York - to invest in start-up, spin-out and scale-up businesses that can help tackle biodiversity loss and climate change.

These companies will then benefit from ongoing access to leading-edge scientific expertise in areas such as plant, fungal and animal sciences, ecology and hydrology, soil and microbiomes, and engineering biology.

The arrangement will see partner organisations benefit from new spinouts through profit share (through co-ownership) and licence fees which allows organisations to fund future research and further build their organisational capacity. The spinout companies will also provide a virtuous loop of valuable data from operating environments for scientists to refine and improve intellectual property.

The fund will focus primarily on investments across three focus areas: making agriculture and forestry more sustainable and enhancing or restoring land and water-based ecosystems; providing technology and expertise that can underpin and unlock green financial markets; and investing in solutions that improve the resilience of human supply chains (from food to medicine), easing pressures on ecosystems or adapting to changing conditions, for example through climate-resilient food crops.