The Venture Opportunity in Solving Real-World Problems

On a Mission

The American Century Private Investments team aims to invest in what the world needs within the sectors of health care and environmental innovation. With that in mind, it’s important to detail how this principle translates into real-world opportunities. As investors focused on advancing human well-being, we seek to identify companies within our target sectors with a focus on measurable impact, scalability, and long-term solutions.

In this article, we outline how we evaluate real-world solutions in practice and apply that framework to the challenge of addressing PFAS, or “forever chemicals.”

Getting Real: Evaluating Solutions in Practice

Through the lenses of people, technology and markets, audacious founders of start-ups seek to disrupt entrenched solutions to existing problems. Exceptional teams and differentiated technologies are important prerequisites for meaningful progress. Beyond these attributes, evaluating real-world solutions requires consideration of measurable outcomes, scalable impact, and long-term viability.

Solutions must have a significant societal impact. Solutions must enable impact at scale. And the approach must feasibly address the problems across market cycles.

The most pressing real-world problems require a focus on costs to society, including impacts on human well-being and the environment. The urgency of these issues informs the scale required to address them. Because capital availability, policy and company valuations inevitably fluctuate, the durability of solutions becomes increasingly important in diligence.

Real-World Problems in Focus: Addressing Forever Chemicals

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a class of compounds often referred to as “forever chemicals.” They contain some of the toughest chemical bonds to break. These compounds were first created in the mid-1900s, with early commercialization by household names such as Teflon™ and Scotchgard™.¹ They quickly gained use across several industries, including consumer products, firefighting and automotive manufacturing. Their use enabled a variety of performance-enhancing advantages, including water repellency, fire suppression and engine efficiency.

However, these breakthroughs also imposed an unintended burden on society. Several PFAS compounds have been linked to serious health concerns, including cancer, reproductive issues, and developmental problems.² Their toxicity and harmful effects have been known for decades, but broader public awareness has brought the problem to the forefront in recent years.³ Surveys by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that most people in the U.S. have already been exposed to these compounds.⁴

The approach to these chemicals has seen a marked shift. Several brands and retailers have announced commitments and restrictions across cookware, food packaging materials, clothing, and furniture.⁵ Some of the world’s largest PFAS producers have also publicly committed to phasing out these chemicals, with support from investors.⁶ With billions of dollars awarded in PFAS water pollution settlements, stakeholders increasingly have an incentive to pursue proactive PFAS destruction to reduce long‑term liability exposure and address new regulatory requirements.⁷

Regulation has shifted from disclosure and downstream remediation toward verifiable accountability for the actual sources of PFAS. More specifically, evolving frameworks at the federal and state levels have elevated validated destruction while constraining legacy approaches such as long-term storage, incineration, and landfill transfer.⁸ There is still a need for solutions that remediate existing toxins and inhibit the creation of future PFAS-related issues.

Real-World Solutions for Taking the ‘Forever’ Out

Companies have turned to solutions such as activated carbon, filter membranes or incineration to address PFAS. More than 15,000 forms of PFAS exist. Yet only a small minority are subject to enforceable federal drinking water standards, with broader regulation occurring through self-reporting and state-level legislation.⁹ Perhaps a bigger challenge is detecting and destroying the often-overlooked short- and ultra-short-chain PFAS categories. These can appear as chemical inputs or byproducts and remain elusive to legacy remediation approaches.

As regulation, liability concerns and market expectations increasingly converge, PFAS solutions may need to address several technical requirements. These include detecting ultra-short-chain compounds, treating water continuously and destroying PFAS at a commercially scalable level.

A new class of companies is developing solutions for this challenge. One example is Claros Technologies, a firm that has created tools for PFAS detection and destruction. Without detection, verifiable PFAS destruction cannot occur. Without verifiable, continuous destruction, no reasonable scaling can occur. And without destruction at scale, no true solution exists for commercial or municipal applications. These facets are especially important in a market that is increasingly focused on the permanent elimination of PFAS rather than containment.

Solutions for What the World Needs

There is a persistent need for new and better solutions in health care and environmental technology. This represents both opportunity and risk, as failing to address these problems can have real-world consequences on the water we drink, the energy we rely on to warm our homes, the surgeries our families may undergo, or the medical devices on which we depend. Market bases have already been established. What remains is an ongoing need for scalable solutions.

This is the foundation of our capabilities and defines how we partner with innovative start-ups. It’s our job to work alongside these audacious founders, not only to build companies but to help scale solutions that matter.

Ambitious? Yes. Challenging? Absolutely. But these challenges also present opportunities to invest in what the world needs.