NEW YORK, September 23, 2026 — Grand Challenges Canada and BillionScale Health today announced at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting that they are joining together to create Nexa Billion, a new initiative to scale up transformational technologies at the nexus of climate and health.
The collaboration will focus first on mosquito-borne diseases, as climate change is creating a dramatic rise in the geographic reach and burden of dengue, malaria and other viruses.
Together, Grand Challenges Canada and BillionScale Health will tackle the financing, market and delivery barriers standing between proven climate-health innovations and scale. Nexa Billion will pool catalytic capital and is seeking additional funding partners to help unlock the country spending, concessional lending and commercial investment needed for scale.
The collaboration brings together Grand Challenges Canada’s experience backing bold ideas with the potential for big impact—and the deep pipeline of health innovations that has grown from that work—with BillionScale Health’s expertise in building the markets, partnerships and financing pathways needed for population-level adoption.
Initial work will focus on two proven approaches: spatial emanators, including SC Johnson’s Guardian™, which provide 83% protection against mosquito bites within homes and schools; and Wolbachia, a nature-based solution that reduces mosquitoes’ ability to transmit dengue and other viruses.
Grand Challenges Canada was an early funder of the Guardian™ through the Mentor Initiative, where it was shown to be enormously effective in conflict-affected settings. Wolbachia is also a proven approach with the potential for significant reach. In a randomized trial in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, areas where Wolbachia was introduced saw 77% fewer dengue cases and 86% fewer hospitalizations. Both solutions are ready for national and regional scale.
At GCC, we’ve spent years backing innovations from around the world, turning early-stage ideas into proven tools that solve problems in the real world , said Karlee Silver, CEO of Grand Challenges Canada. Through Nexa, our global climate and health initiative, we’re hearing directly from people experiencing the health impacts of climate change. That puts us in a powerful position to match urgent needs with bold, proven solutions and focus on the barriers that keep these innovations from reaching scale. Having started my own career as a malaria researcher, I know just how consequential that could be for mosquito-borne disease.
Moving proven innovations to that kind of scale requires more than innovation funding. That’s where BillionScale Health’s experience comes in.
Scale changes everything. It bends the curve on cost. It bends the curve on burden, freeing up precious health resources. Scale empowers countries, and it creates a repeatable model for their neighbors to follow,” said Martin Edlund, CEO, BillionScale Health. “Nexa Billion will provide the catalytic grant capital needed to accelerate scale on a national and regional level across Asia, Latin America, and Africa – starting with ending the growing crisis of mosquito-borne disease.
With its initial focus areas identified, the next phase of Nexa Billion will bring on additional funding partners and advance the first opportunities for scale. Grand Challenges Canada and BillionScale Health are inviting governments, philanthropies, development finance institutions, manufacturers, implementation partners, and investors to help shape and finance that work.
Nexa Billion builds on Nexa, a global climate and health innovation initiative co-led by Grand Challenges Canada, the Science for Africa Foundation, and AVPN. It was informed by a global survey of more than 6,400 frontline health and humanitarian workers across 107 countries, which identified mosquito-borne diseases, heat stress and air pollution as the top climate-related health threats.
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About Nexa Billion
Nexa Billion is a new initiative financing the scale-up of transformational technologies at the nexus of climate and health in Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and Africa. It is co-led by Grand Challenges Canada and BillionScale Health, alongside a coalition of funders obsessed with scale. Learn more at NexaBillion.org
About Grand Challenges Canada
Grand Challenges Canada (GCC) backs Bold Ideas with Big Impact®. With anchor funding from the Government of Canada, GCC invests in bold, locally led innovations solving critical health and development challenges, and helps the most promising solutions reach millions of people around the world. GCC has supported more than 1,600 innovations in 110 countries and aims to reach 700 million people by 2035. Learn more at www.grandchallenges.ca
About BillionScale Health
BillionScale Health finds and finances solutions to the world’s biggest health challenges. We are on a mission to scale five breakthrough technologies to a billion people each in the next ten years. We identify proven, breakthrough solutions and build self-sustaining markets around them, driven by local demand, fueled by affordable supply, and set in motion by catalytic capital. We are building a global network of Billion-Scalers, including innovative funders, companies and country governments. Learn more at BillionScale.org.
Media contacts
Grand Challenges Canada: Gillian Mathurin, media@grandchallenges.ca, 647-406-5731BillionScale Health: Kristin Jangraw, Kristin.Jangraw@BillionScale.org, 914-265-0610