Value Hive Podcast Will Thomson (Massif Capital): Clean Tech Royalties (CVW) and Commodity Exposure Deep Dive
Apr 3, 2026
Will Thomson, investment manager at Massif Capital known for research on royalties and the Commodity Purity Index. He talks about clean-tech royalty firms and how they finance sustainable industrial tech. He dives into building an AI-enabled research workflow and automating analysis. He also explores the Commodity Purity Index, commodity exposure across miners, and specific names and regional themes he’s watching.
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Automate Repetitive Modeling To Focus On Judgement
- Automate repetitive analyst tasks like charting and modeling to free time for judgment calls.
- Will created skills that auto-generate Excel charts and modeled portfolio trades to answer questions like whether adding to losing positions helps.
Finding CVW Through Custom Royalty Indices
- Will found CVW by maintaining custom indices and adding new royalty names he reviews monthly.
- CVW finances industrial clean-tech pilots and takes perpetual revenue royalties, backed by a $100m war chest including Fairfax and Pierre Lassonde.
Royalties Can Finance Clean Tech Scale Up Instead Of Generation
- Renewable royalties can target financing gaps in scaling tech rather than utility-scale generation.
- CVW focuses on valley-of-death industrial tech (e.g., asphalt shingle processing, modular ice plants) and takes royalties on deployed revenue rather than financing solar farms.