100x Impact, based at the London School of Economics (LSE), has opened applications for its 2027/28 cohort. It is seeking ambitious social ventures with proven models and the potential to scale their impact to match the size of the problems they exist to address.

Applications are open to for-profit and non-profit ventures worldwide across various impact areas, including health, education, climate, financial inclusion, and democracy.

100x is looking for future social unicorns—organisations capable of improving the lives of billions of people. The initiative has already backed 47 ventures, collectively impacting 500 million lives worldwide. Ventures in the portfolio have gone on to raise 25 times the capital invested by 100x and reach three times as many lives.

Fan Gu, the Chief Investment Officer at 100x Impact, said:

“Proving that a solution works is a major achievement. Taking it to the scale of the problem requires another set of choices: who needs to adopt it, what evidence will give them confidence, and what funding and partnerships will make that possible. We’re looking for leaders ready to tackle those questions, with the ambition to go further and the openness to rethink how they get there.”

Selected ventures will join a community that includes Noora Health, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, Wysa, SwipeRx and Adalat AI, alongside recent additions such as Gooey.AI, Friendship Bench, Haqdarshak and Planet Indonesia. Together, these ventures bring experience in navigating some of the hardest questions in social innovation: what conditions enable sustained scale, how to work through existing systems, and how to enable others to adopt what works.

Ventures will also receive £150,000 in catalytic grant funding and participate in a 16-week accelerator programme, combining tailored support in scaling strategy, impact measurement, and leadership with access to LSE’s research expertise and a global community of peers, advisers, and potential partners. The programme marks the beginning of a longer-term partnership with 100x as ventures develop and pursue their pathways to scale.

“Before, I was thinking of scaling as reaching more learners. The change in perspective is that there are many different types of endgames, and many models you can use to scale. Now I’m less focused on ‘how do we reach more learners?’ and more on ‘what needs to change in a system so a billion learners can access opportunities?’ When you’re pushed to think at that scale, the questions you ask yourself change drastically,” said Janine Teo, Founder and CEO at Solve Education, a 100x portfolio venture in Southeast Asia.

100x is a learning partner, working alongside ventures and drawing on LSE’s social science expertise to understand what enables effective models to scale and spread, while making those lessons useful to funders, policymakers and practitioners.

“Every cohort deepens our understanding of what it takes to scale impact. The ventures we back bring knowledge built through years of working with communities and navigating complex systems. Learning alongside them helps us continually strengthen our programme and share practical insights that others can build on,” Fan added.

Applications close on 2 November 2026, with the autumn programme set to begin in September 2027.