Robert Downey Jr. Used a Las Vegas Stage to Launch the FootPrint Coalition, Then Built a Climate-Tech Fund
LAS VEGAS — Robert Downey Jr. walked onstage at Amazon’s Re:MARS conference in June 2019 still wearing the Tony Stark joke, then spent the keynote trying to retire it. Between robotics and nanotechnology, he said, « we could clean up the planet significantly, if not totally, in 10 years. » He called the new vehicle the Footprint Coalition. The website went live as he left the stage: a newsletter form and not much else.
« God I love experts. They’re like Wikipedia with character defects, » he said, after a round-table of them had briefed him. Matt Damon did a cameo. Amazon Alexa did another. Downey admitted he is « a one-man carbon footprint nightmare colossus » and that he carries « this quiet sense of crisis. » He did not explain the engineering. He said even a small dent would be the most important thing he had ever done.
The Coalition did not stay a punchline. On January 27, 2021, at a World Economic Forum Davos Agenda panel, Downey unveiled FootPrint Coalition Ventures — rolling AngelList funds that let accredited fans co-invest with him in climate-tech startups. He framed it as a rejection of the idea that a handful of mega-corporations would solve what he called a global existential threat.
The operation split into three arms: a venture shop, a media shop that turns environmental science into watchable video, and the FootPrint Coalition Science Engine, which seeds non-traditional researchers. Portfolio companies have included biodegradable-polymer maker RWDC Industries, insect-protein firm Ÿnsect, and Source, which pulls drinking water from air. The storytelling side grew from the Coalition’s « Downstream » channel, co-hosted with managing director Rachel Kropa, into Downey’s Dream Cars, a series about converting his classic-car collection to electric, hybrid, and biodiesel.
Downey and his wife Susan had already produced an eight-episode YouTube docu-series on AI. He still talks about artificial intelligence as the tool that gives him hope and the environment as the thing that keeps him up. The off-hand Iron Man line in Las Vegas — clean the planet in ten years — did not hit the calendar. It did become one of the more durable celebrity-led climate-tech platforms in the industry.
Site: footprintcoalition.com. Related from The AEGIS Alliance: the country that banned orca and dolphin breeding, and our report on the 2018 YouTube outage.
Featured Image Credit: Tony Stark (AP Photo)
