climate tech

Blue Bear Capital lands $160M to back AI founders in climate, energy, and industry

Climate /

It’s a truism in the climate tech world that hardware is paramount. After all, you can’t curb carbon pollution without fixing cement, steel, hydrogen, and more. But as with anything today, hardware is just part of the equation. “In almost every case, hardware is going to be developed with software in mind,” Vaughn Blake, partner […]

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Large funds are too invested in the energy transition to turn back now

Climate /

The results of the U.S. presidential election has left many worried about the future of climate tech, but the energy transition has enough financial momentum that experts aren’t expecting investment trends to change anytime soon. Limited partners like pension funds and endowments have committed $892 billion over the last decade to the energy transition, according

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Why Crosscut Ventures is ‘following the founders’ into climate, space, and beyond

Fundraising /

Eight years ago, Brian Garrett and his partners sensed the ground shifting.  At the time, Crosscut Ventures, where Garrett is co-founder and managing partner, had been investing in early stage startups in Los Angeles and Southern California for nearly a decade. It focused mostly on software companies, but it started shifting its attention to hardware,

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Women in AI: Marissa Hummon thinks AI will help make the power grid greener

AI /

As a part of TechCrunch’s ongoing Women in AI series, which seeks to give AI-focused women academics and others their well-deserved — and overdue — time in the spotlight, TechCrunch interviewed Marissa Hummon, the chief technology officer at the energy company Utilidata, where she is working to make the electric grid more sustainable.  “The work

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Data center tech is exploding but adoption won’t be easy for startups

Climate /

The data center industry is expanding rapidly to keep up with the flywheel growth of AI. While these data centers are necessary AI infrastructure, they store an AI company’s compute, they are expensive to build, seemingly more so to run, and they are a huge energy suck. Startups are looking to make data centers more

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Venture studio Diagram expands into climate tech with oversubscribed fund

Venture /

Eight-year-old Diagram is expanding its startup incubator model into climate. The Montreal-based venture studio, which launches startups in house, raised $80 million CAD ($58 million) for its fourth studio fund, Diagram ClimateTech Fund. The firm said the vehicle surpassed its initial $60 million CAD ($43 million) target, hitting its hard cap, and is the studio’s

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Unhappy with their exit, these ex-Planetly employees are using AI to refine carbon accounting

AI /

Startup employees often go on to found interesting ventures, basing their new work on the experience gained from their time building a company from scratch. But not all of those experiences are positive, and sometimes, a less-than-satisfactory exit can do more to fuel a founder’s fervor than anything else. In the case of Forward Earth’s

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Toyota Ventures’s Jim Adler says climate tech startups need to secure future buyers

Climate /

Jim Adler, founder and general partner at Toyota Ventures, is concerned that climate technology gains could fall into the “valley of death” if companies fail to drum up enough demand to survive.  And he’s not wrong to be worried.  Climate tech investments in the first half of 2024 dipped for the second consecutive year, both

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