Resilience in the Built Environment: Unlocking the Social License for AI
As we build Resilient Systems Capital, we're launching an event series & inviting the smartest people we know to dive deep on the problems they're tackling as they build teams & companies for a rapidly changing physical and digital world. Co-hosted with Stack Growth Fund, a growth-stage fund focused on follow-ons into breakout companies across infrastructure, industrial deep tech, and energy for AI.
This first is on Resilient Communities, Resilient Grid: Unlocking the Social License for AI Mon, Apr 20, 3-5pm in SF.
We are lucky to have Ameet Konkar (CEO) and Hunter Maats (CSO) joining us from Resilience (CC Seed portco). Resilience is building the one answer nobody else in the room is building: community alignment as the supply-side solution to the hyperscaler load problem. An offtake architecture where buying the energy product contractually creates the community benefit that defends the permits — not an ESG overlay, not a grant program, the same transaction. Resilient homes. Resilient grid. Resilient returns. The community isn't the obstacle — it's the infrastructure.
Social license has moved from a PR concern to the primary engineering constraint on the AI buildout. $156B in data center projects were blocked by community opposition in 2025. Sightline Climate projects 30–50% of 2026 data centers will be delayed. Senators are opening federal investigations into Big Tech cost-shifting onto ratepayers. The industry has no operational answer for it — yet. Some recent relevant references:
Rewiring America: Homegrown Energy — How Household Upgrades Can Meet 100% of Data Center Demand Growth
World Economic Forum: Why AI and Datacentre Growth Risks Stalling Without a Social Licence to Operate
Latitude Media: Will Data Centers Start Investing in Your Home?
Thanks, as always, to our friends at Goodwin for partnering with us and sharing their space. Goodwin sits at an unusually productive intersection for a conversation like this one — few firms combine top-tier practices in real estate, private equity, investment funds, technology, and climate tech under one roof, and Resilience is the kind of company that touches all five.
Goodwin's Climate Tech practice has the mission of supporting clients' efforts to avert the worst consequences of the global environmental crisis by providing differentiated and highly sophisticated legal services to startups and startup investors in the climate technologies sector. Our clients are developing and scaling innovations in climate software, renewable energy, carbon capture and storage, nuclear fusion, batteries, mobility, sustainable agriculture, materials science, advanced manufacturing, plastic alternatives, and other areas. Our team is the first of its kind in the industry, consisting of experts in the field with backgrounds not only in law, but in biotech sciences, engineering, and public health policy development. As such, we are able to provide proactive and comprehensive legal services to climate technology enterprises and investors across the globe. To learn more about our global law firm, please visit www.goodwinlaw.com.
By registering for this event, you agree to share your registration information with the organizers of SF Climate Week.