Sunlight Partners
About
Sunlight Partners is a short activist hedge fund targeting uncorrelated returns and environmental impact. We publish forensic research on the technologies, claims and processes shaping what could be ‘the largest reallocation of capital in history’.1
The problem: capital is flowing into decarbonisation faster than anyone can verify the claims attached to it. About US$2.2 trillion a year now goes into clean energy, up roughly 75% since 2020.2 Over the same period oversight has thinned: the EPA filed 16 civil judicial enforcement complaints in 2025, down 76% on the first year of the previous administration, and more than 3,000 facilities have sat in significant water-pollution non-compliance for three years or longer.3 Fraud, greenwashing and unproven technology get funded.
Our answer: investigative research that identifies overvalued companies built on environmental fraud, greenwashing or unsustainable practices. We take short positions, publish our findings and let the market re-rate. Shorts that do not warrant a campaign are run alongside in a factor-neutral long/short book of around forty names, so returns are not dependent on campaign timing.
The team combines long/short investing (Invenomic) with derivatives trading (Citadel Securities, Optiver) and institutional-grade execution run on our own desk rather than outsourced. The research runs on our own platform, Sunny, built in-house and held to the same rule as our analysts: no claim without a source. Every published campaign carries an impact statement measured against IRIS+ frameworks. The Fund launched on 1 May 2026.
1. McKinsey, Five Fifty: The great reallocation. 2. IEA, World Energy Investment 2026. 3. Environmental Integrity Project, Declining Environmental Enforcement in Trump’s Second Term, 5 February 2026.
Our team
Forensic research, trade execution and portfolio management under one roof.
Will Funnell
Co-Founder, Chief Investment Officer
Will runs the firm, the trading infrastructure, and the hedge and execution side of the book.
He has spent his career building and running institutional options businesses across APAC. As Citadel Securities’ Head of Hong Kong Index and Equity Options he was integral to launching the firm’s APAC semi-systematic options business. Earlier he scaled Optiver’s APAC wholesale options business to a market-leading 40% institutional trade share.
Both of those desks were built from nothing: the team, the trading systems, the compliance framework, the prime broker relationships and the technology underneath them. Standing up a fund takes the same work.
BCom/LLB, Finance and Management (Monash).
Nathaniel Victor, CFA
Co-Founder, Portfolio Manager
Nate manages the Sunlight portfolio: the long/short book alongside the published campaigns, with factor and sector exposure held within bands so returns come from stock selection.
He was a Partner at Invenomic Capital Management, a US$2.5bn long/short equity fund he joined at launch in 2017 before departing in 2024. During that period the fund compounded at approximately 20% a year net with no down years, at around 20% average net exposure.4 Invenomic received the 2024 LSEG Lipper Fund Award for Best Alternative Long/Short Equity Fund over three and five years.
Nate led the analyst team there and invested in more than 25 high-conviction environmental shorts.
MBA with Honours (Duke). MS, Agriculture, Food and Resource Economics (MSU). BA, Economics (Kalamazoo).
4. Invenomic Capital Management performance per the fund’s reported net returns, 2017 to 2024, as published by LSEG Lipper and the fund’s investor reporting. This is the performance of a fund previously managed by Mr Victor as a Partner. It is not the performance of any Sunlight Partners fund. Past performance is not indicative of future performance.
The wider team
Behind the campaigns is a research bench with more than twenty years each in short-focused equity work: forensic accounting, primary research and published campaigns across batteries, solar, bioplastics, biotech and the circular economy. Between them they have published on dozens of names and run successful short campaigns at specialist funds.
Our quantitative and platform work is led by engineers drawn from institutional asset management and academic research, and the screening platform behind our target universe was built in-house.
We are advised on climate risk and on energy markets by a professor of finance who directs a climate institute and formerly ran interest rate and FX research at a global asset manager, and by a former senior global energy correspondent and Middle East bureau chief at a major US newspaper.
We do not publish the names of our research team. Campaign work invites retaliation, and we would rather our analysts be judged on what they publish than be targets for it.