[mfrank]

This is great news but I'm pretty sure this it is not a "first of its kind" occurrence as there are a number of vehicles (e.g. New Profit in Boston) that specialize in these types of strategic venture-like philanthropy investments.

[avemuri]

Yup. There's a bunch of impact funds that do this kind of investment and measure themselves on metrics other than IRR. eg. Khosla Impact, Acumen, etc etc.