MSCI, the New York-listed provider of indexes and investment data, agreed on June 24, 2026 to acquire First Street, a New York company that builds physics-based models of physical climate risk for individual properties around the world.
MSCI said it would pay $120 million in cash at closing, subject to customary adjustments, with further cash payments possible during the first two years after closing if First Street reached certain revenue thresholds. The size of those potential earnout payments was not disclosed.
The company initially said it expected the deal to close in the third quarter of 2026. MSCI announced on August 3, 2026 that it had completed the acquisition. First Street's results are reported within MSCI's Sustainability and Climate segment.
What First Street built
First Street was founded in 2016 and is led by founder and chief executive Matthew Eby. It started as a nonprofit research organisation and later spun off a public benefit corporation, according to coverage of its 2024 funding.
The company's multi-hazard models estimate how floods, wildfires, wind and extreme heat could affect a given asset today and in the future. MSCI said the models incorporate climate signals and are validated against observed events, and that they estimate physical exposure, asset damage and business interruption.
First Street combines those hazard models with its own data on building characteristics, infrastructure dependencies and site-level adaptation measures to turn hazards into estimates of financial impact. Customers access the results through an AI-enabled platform with visualisations and on-demand analytics for single properties, companies and portfolios. Eby has described the company as the creator of a category it calls Climate Risk Financial Modeling.
In its March 2026 report The New Cost of Doing Business, First Street found that companies had become more than 6.5 times as likely to issue profit warnings following extreme weather events over the past two decades. MSCI cited the finding in its announcement.
“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.”
Why MSCI is buying
MSCI said investors, lenders, insurers and companies increasingly want physical climate risk built directly into investment and risk processes, rather than handled in separate reports. It plans to combine First Street's data with its existing geospatial and climate tools so that clients can assess financially relevant physical risk at any geographic coordinate and across more than 2 billion structures worldwide. By the time the deal closed, MSCI put First Street's coverage at more than 2.4 billion structures.
The company also pointed to regulation. MSCI said the added capabilities could help institutions meet rising regulatory and reporting requirements, and noted that major European central banks already use MSCI data to identify climate risks in their loan books.
Richard Mattison, MSCI's head of sustainability and climate, said geopolitical turmoil, supply chain disruption and climate hazards had sharpened attention on the financial consequences of where assets sit, and that clients wanted deeper analysis of the physical risk in a company's operations and investments.
The founder and the funding
First Street raised $46 million across a Series A and a Series A-1 round. The $21 million A-1, announced in July 2024 five months after the Series A, was led by Innovation Endeavors, with SE Ventures, which is backed by Schneider Electric, and Nuveen Real Estate also investing.
At the time, the company said it would use the money to speed up the launch of a new software product and to extend its models from the United States to international markets at the same resolution. Its plans included a correlated risk model that assesses several perils together across climate scenarios for a whole property portfolio.
The $120 million upfront payment is about 2.6 times the $46 million First Street had raised, before any earnout. MSCI did not disclose First Street's revenue or headcount.
From research group to data vendor
MSCI serves asset managers and owners, private-market investors, hedge funds, wealth managers, banks, insurers and corporates. It already sold geospatial intelligence, climate scenario analysis and transition finance tools, and said First Street's models would build on that work.
For First Street, the sale caps a short commercial history. The organisation began as a nonprofit and set up its for-profit arm only in early 2024, then raised its venture rounds the same year. Two years later it agreed to sell to MSCI.
Eby said the company was built on the conviction that every financial decision should account for a changing climate, and that joining MSCI would put its property-level science in front of large investors, lenders and insurers.
