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- Al Gore's fund revealed a 0.5% stake in Toast following the restaurant-software provider's IPO.
- Generation Investment Management's Toast stock is worth around $128 million.
- Gore and his team co-led Toast's $101 million Series C funding round in 2017.
Al Gore is best known for warning the planet is toast unless we address the climate crisis. The former US vice-president will be celebrating a different hot prospect following restaurant-software provider Toast's stock-market debut in September.
Gore is the cofounder and chairman of Generation Investment Management, a sustainable-investment fund with a $24 billion US stock portfolio. Generation recently disclosed that it owns 2.5 million Class A shares of Toast, representing 0.5% of the startup's outstanding shares. The stake is worth about $128 million, based on Toast's closing stock price on Tuesday.
Toast didn't list Generation among its major shareholders in its IPO filing, as Gore's fund owns less than 5% of the company. However, Generation co-led Toast's $101 million Series C financing round in 2017. Given Toast now commands a $26 billion market capitalization, Generation has likely racked up a massive unrealized gain on its early bet on the company.
Generation and Toast didn't respond to requests for comment from Insider.
Toast sells mobile, cloud-based, point-of-service (POS) systems to restaurants. The units help eateries to process orders faster, increase efficiency, reduce waste, and make more money. Toast's biggest investors include Bessemer Venture Partners, Tiger Global Management, and T. Rowe Price.
The startup's revenues jumped 24% to $823 million in 2020, but a sharp increase in costs meant its net loss widened by 19% to $248 million. Toast's revenues roughly doubled year-on-year to $704 million in the first six months of 2021, but the company lost another $235 million in the period.
Gore starred in the Oscar-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" and was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for raising awareness of the climate crisis.