When the headlines hit that Fidelity Investments was liquidating a handful of its ETFs (as announced in Fidelity Investments® Announces Liquidation of Five Exchange-Traded Funds), including several focused on sustainability and women's leadership, the collective sigh from the impact investing community was almost audible. It’s the kind of news that feels like a retreat, a quiet admission that maybe the grand experiment of aligning capital with conscience was just a passing fad.
I get it. On the surface, it looks like a step backward. But I’m here to tell you that’s not the story. It’s not even close. What we're witnessing isn't the end of an ideal; it's the messy, necessary, and frankly, exciting end of its infancy. We're moving past the training wheels.
When I first saw the news, I honestly just sat back in my chair, speechless. Not because I was disappointed, but because the contrast was so stark. Just days before, a landmark 83% of Companies Increased Sustainability Investments Over Past Year: Deloitte Survey landed on my desk. They’re not doing it because of pressure from shareholders—in fact, that pressure has apparently gone down. They're doing it for a much simpler, more powerful reason: it's good for business. They're seeing real revenue growth, better efficiency, and stronger brands.
So, what gives? How can a giant like Fidelity Investments pull back while the world’s biggest companies are pushing forward? The answer is everything. It tells us that we're in the middle of a profound shift from performative sustainability to operational sustainability.
For years, the primary way for most people to participate in "green" investing was through themed funds. You’d buy into an ETF with "Sustainable" or "Leadership" in its name, and you'd feel good. It was a statement. But let’s be honest with ourselves: it was often just a label, a marketing wrapper around a basket of stocks that may or may not have been fundamentally different.
This is the difference between buying a t-shirt that says "I Care About The Planet" and actually engineering a new industrial process that uses 90% less water. One is a signal; the other is a systemic change. The market is finally waking up to the fact that the signal is cheap, but the system is where the real value lies. Fidelity shuttering these funds isn't a rejection of sustainability; it's a rejection of the flimsy, first-generation model of packaging it.
Think about it. We’re moving beyond what I call "conscience-as-a-product." The real revolution isn't happening in the marketing departments of asset managers; it's happening in the server rooms, the supply chains, and the R&D labs of the companies themselves. The Deloitte report is the proof. When 66% of executives say their sustainability actions are generating revenue, they aren't talking about the performance of an ESG-branded stock fund. They're talking about redesigning their logistics to cut fuel costs, using AI to predict and prevent waste, and developing new products that are intrinsically more efficient.
This leads to a crucial question for all of us: if the old labels are fading, where should we be looking for the `best investments for 2025`? Where do we find the companies that are actually building this better future, not just talking about it?
This brings us to the person who, in my opinion, understands this shift better than almost anyone: Nvidia's CEO, Jensen Huang. In a recent talk, he called OpenAI one of the "smartest investments we can possibly imagine," predicting it will become a multi-trillion-dollar company. Now, on the surface, that sounds like a tech CEO hyping another tech company. But you have to look deeper at the "why."
Huang's entire career has been a bet on a single, explosive idea: that computation is the most valuable resource of the 21st century. His vision is that AI and accelerated computing aren't just for building better chatbots or cooler video games; they are a new industrial foundation. This is the kind of breakthrough that reminds me why I got into this field in the place—the sheer scale of this is just staggering and it means the gap between the world we have and the one we can build is closing faster than we can even comprehend.
And here’s the connection that everyone seems to be missing. That same Deloitte survey found that 81% of companies are already using AI to advance their sustainability goals. They're using it to find efficiencies, slash operational emissions, and model climate risk. They're using it to invent more sustainable materials and create smarter, less wasteful products.
This is the paradigm shift. The engine of sustainability is no longer just policy or goodwill; it's processing power. We're entering an era of computational sustainability. This uses incredibly complex AI models to optimize everything—in simpler terms, it means using math to solve our biggest physical problems, from energy grids to global shipping.
So when Jensen Huang talks about the value of AI, he's implicitly talking about the new engine of global efficiency. The `best investments` aren't necessarily in companies that call themselves "green," but in the ones providing the tools to make every company greener, smarter, and more resilient. The future of `alternative investments` isn't in a niche fund; it’s in the foundational technologies that are rewriting the rules of what's possible. This is a transformation on the scale of the printing press or the steam engine—a general-purpose technology that will touch everything.
Of course, with this immense power comes immense responsibility. We have to ensure that this AI-driven efficiency doesn't just become another tool to concentrate wealth and power. How do we distribute the gains of this new industrial revolution so that it lifts everyone up, not just a select few? That's the ethical tightrope we have to walk.
Let's be clear. The market isn't abandoning sustainability. It's just getting smarter. It's demanding proof, not promises. It's rewarding operational excellence, not just marketing savvy. The liquidation of a few ETFs is just noise. The signal is the roar of trillions of dollars in capital and R&D pouring into the computational infrastructure that will define the next century.
Stop looking for the green sticker on the box. The real value, the real impact, and the real future are being built by the companies that are fundamentally re-engineering the box itself. We are at the dawn of an era where the most profitable companies will, by necessity, be the most efficient and sustainable ones. And that’s a future worth investing in.
