This study examines the potential differential impacts of investee firms’ global sustainability on foreign institutional investors (FIIs) and domestic institutional investors (DIIs). Exploiting firms’ sustainable activities in the United Nations Global Compact, the results confirm that firms committed to global sustainability attract greater investment from FIIs, but deters more investment from DIIs. In addition, firms aligned with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) attract significantly more foreign and total institutional investors than firms with signatories to UNGC or publishing reports in UNGC. In further analysis, the opposite investment tastes of FIIs and DIIs are more pronounced when the investee firm has a higher level of information asymmetry, proxied by higher analyst forecast inaccuracy and international diversification. In addition, the heterogeneity of FIIs and DIIs plays a significant moderating role because FIIs with higher sustainability preferences invest more in global sustainable firms while DIIs with lower sustainability preferences invest less in global sustainable firms. We next test the economic outcome of mobilized investments from FIIs and DIIs in response to global sustainability and find that when investee firms align with SDGs, the flowing institutional ownerships enhance firm market value most significantly. Our study provides implications for introducing foreign investment to fill the SDG financing gap.