MSCI acquires climate risk data provider First Street

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🗞️ Driving the news: MSCI has acquired First Street, a climate risk financial modelling provider, for $120 million, aiming to expand its physical climate risk analytics across global assets
• The deal strengthens MSCI’s ability to offer property-level climate insights to investors, banks, insurers, and developers

🔭 The context: First Street, founded in 2016, provides deterministic, physics-based models to quantify hazards such as floods, wildfires, wind, and extreme heat at a granular, property-specific level
• MSCI plans to integrate this data with its existing geospatial and climate solutions to assess risk for more than 2 billion structures worldwide
• The acquisition reflects growing demand from financial institutions for actionable climate risk data in investment and lending decisions

🌍 Why it matters for the planet: By embedding climate risk into financial decision-making, investors and asset managers can prioritize resilience and adaptation, potentially reducing the exposure of infrastructure and communities to extreme weather events
• This helps channel capital toward safer, more sustainable development and accelerates risk-aware climate adaptation

⏭️ What’s next: The transaction is expected to close in Q3 2026, subject to regulatory approval
• Once integrated, MSCI will provide enhanced property-level risk metrics for institutions, enabling better climate-informed portfolio management, compliance with rising reporting requirements, and more targeted investment in climate-resilient infrastructure

💬 One quote: “Joining MSCI puts our property-level science in front of the world’s leading investors, lenders and insurers and turns climate risk from a disclosure exercise into a daily input for how capital is priced and allocated.” – Matthew Eby, CEO, First Street

📈 One stat: First Street’s models cover physical risk assessments for over 2 billion structures globally, enabling unprecedented geographic granularity in climate risk evaluation

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