PHOTOS: On New Year’s Day in 2023, Renner was nearly killed on his Nevada property when his 14,000-pound snowcat pinned him on an icy mountain. The “tragic accident,” as the Reno sheriff would then call it at the time, left the two-time Oscar nominee with over 30 broken bones, a collapsed lung, and a pierced liver that left him in critical but stable condition in intensive care following surgery.
The 54-year-old, probably most famous for playing the Marvel superhero Hawkeye in eight different appearances, was frank when discussing the incident: If it weren’t for the people rushing to help him that fateful New Year’s Day morning, he may very well have succumbed to his blunt chest trauma and orthopedic injuries. All paths to his home were blocked (he was initially trying to dig out a family member), and the cascade of emergency responders had to navigate the brutal terrain to keep him alive, from fire departments to paramedics to a Care Flight helicopter, 150 people in total, by Renner’s own count. He spent months recovering, asking a single question: What could he do for the people who saved him?
The answer, it turns out, is RapidSOS. Renner has become a partner and investor in the New York–based public safety AI company. It’s his first major public safety partnership since the accident, but he told Fortune it’s not a celebrity endorsement. He described it as a personal mission rooted in the debt he can never fully repay.
“There’s 150 people that are responsible for me not dying,” Renner told Fortune in an exclusive interview ahead of the announcement. “I’ll always be in debt to them and so thankful for my life. And that’s why I’m a part of this company, because I think it’ll help them do their job more efficiently, better, and that just trickles down into the person that they’re serving in an emergency.”