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Acumen joins 2X Challenge to advance gender lens investing

Acumen reinforces its commitment to investing in women and expanding economic opportunity across underserved markets

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NEW YORK CITY (June 1, 2026) — Acumen today announced it has joined the global 2X Challenge, a multilateral initiative mobilizing capital toward investments that empower women through entrepreneurship, leadership, dignified employment, and access to products and services. The 2X Challenge applies the 2X Criteria, a widely used framework for gender lens investing, and has mobilized more than $33.6 billion in gender lens investments globally since its launch at the G7 Summit in 2018.

Acumen joins a select group of private investors participating in the initiative alongside leading development finance institutions and multilateral banks. Together, these organizations share a belief that expanding economic opportunity for women is essential to reducing poverty and building more resilient communities. Across many of the markets where Acumen invests, women remain disproportionately excluded from access to capital, dignified work, leadership opportunities, and essential services.

“Acumen invests capital and resources into social enterprises confronting problems at the intersection of poverty and climate. From our 25 years of investing, we know that poverty is not gender neutral. We’ve also seen how women are central to building solutions to poverty and climate change, as leaders, entrepreneurs, suppliers, and customers. We are proud to join the 2X Challenge as a Private Sector member to publicly align our capital with our values.”

Carsten Stendevad, President and Chief Investment Officer, Acumen

Acumen’s gender-smart investment approach spans sectors critical to economic mobility and poverty reduction, including sustainable agriculture, renewable energy and workforce development — areas where expanding opportunity for women can create ripple effects across entire communities. Research shows that increasing women’s access to agricultural resources can boost farm yields and reduce food insecurity, while greater access to clean energy and education can improve health outcomes, strengthen household resilience, and expand long-term earning potential.

Today, nearly 88 percent of Acumen’s portfolio aligns with the 2X Criteria, reflecting a long track record of supporting women founders and gender-inclusive enterprises, including Greenway Grameen, which produces clean cooking stoves, and S4S Technologies, which develops solar-powered food processing and dehydration technology that helps increase incomes for smallholder farmers, many of them women.

The 2X Challenge is managed by 2X Global and expanded in 2024 to include private investors for the first time. The latest phase of the initiative aims to mobilize at least $20 billion in gender lens investments by 2027, with a growing emphasis on the intersection of gender and climate finance.

About Acumen
Acumen is a global force of entrepreneurs, investors, philanthropists, and social innovators working together to build a world based on dignity. We were founded by Jacqueline Novogratz on the radical idea that business, when cultivated with moral imagination, can break the cycle of poverty. We invest in transformational companies, build sustainable markets, and prepare leaders with the tools they need to create a more just and inclusive future. Since 2001, we have scaled companies and shaped markets in some of the hardest-to-reach communities on the planet, impacting over half-a-billion lives. Learn more.

About 2X Global
2X Global is a membership and field-building organisation focused on unlocking gender-smart capital at scale. We engage the full spectrum of investment actors, capital providers, and intermediaries working in public and private markets, across both developed and emerging economies towards this mission. Through a broad and diverse set of activities we activate and engage our global community to advance intersectional investment agendas, scale the field, shift mindsets, and facilitate capital deployment. Learn more.

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