š¢ 100% Sustainable Seed to Unicorn - 7.31.21
Sea-to-table software gets a seed, EV recycling gets a unicorn, and everyone gets more sustainable
Announcement
Iām stoked to share that The Green Bite has a new writer - Josh Kaplan! Josh works at Aurora Solar, a cutting-edge solar software company, and is one of my nearest and dearest friends. Welcome!
One Big Thing to Chew On
As wildfires have begun to spark across the United States, with smoke spreading as far East as New York City, Americans are enduring the start of an early, and likely challenging fire season. Climate tech companies are taking aim at gaps in satellite tracking and firefighting AI availability (NBC). It will take more than private sector initiative to solve this crisis, though. Learn more about fire management in our newest section - Green Theory.
Selected Deal Flow by Category
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Transportation
UK-based EV subscription service Onto raised $175M Series B in equity and debt led by Alfven & Didrikson. The UK is banning sales of new cars with internal combustion engines by 2030. (TC) (Are you ready for this in your state?)Ā
CA-based Redwood Materials (cofounded by Eph Andy Stevenson!), which aims to create a circular supply chain by recycling scraps from battery and consumer tech manufacturing, raised a $700M Series C at a $3.7B valuation led by T. Rowe Price (TC)
EV startup Rivian raised a $2.5B private funding round led by Amazonās Climate Pledge Fund, D1 Capital, Ford, and T. Rowe Price. They didnāt share their total valuation. (TC)
Energy & Infrastructure
Climate-based artificial intelligence company ClimateAi, which hopes to tackle climate risk across the agriculture value chain, raised a $12M Series A led by Radical Ventures (VC)
Grid management software startup Camus Energy raised a $16M Series A led by Park West Asset Management (PRN)
CPG
Indonesian āsea-to-tableā platform Aruna, which helps small fisheries focus on sustainability and access resources & markets, raised $35M series A led by Prosus Ventures and East Ventures Growth Fund. (TC)
Plant-based food tech startup NotCo raised a $235M Series D at a $1.5B valuation led by Tiger Global (TC)
Finance
Carbon neutral bitcoin miner Core Scientific received a $54M investment from crypto platform Celsius (PRN)
One Actionable Item
Invest in green stocks and bonds
Put your money where your mouth is by investing in green stonks. This is like voting with your dollar: a drop in the bucket individually, but collectively can catalyze major changes. In many ways, it has already. Ā
My personal favorite option is Carbon Collective. It was co-founded by a fellow Bay Area person and Tawongan (IYKYK), Zach Stein. Do your own research, though. Hereās an intro to sustainable investing. Carbon Collective also has some really fantastic articles on related subjects.
*Never thought Iād actually be saying this, butā¦ I am not a financial advisor and this is not investment advice.Ā
**Yaāll clicked through on the critique links more than the actual action item last week! Find thoughtful critiques regarding todayās sustainable investing landscape here, here, or here.Ā
***If youāre inspired by that last article, consider checking out Klima, which I shouted out in an action item a few weeks back.
Green Theory
*This is a brand new section. Where One Actionable Item is focused on microcosmic changes, Green Theory will be dedicated to thinking about systemic-level topics re. climate.
How to Think about WildfiresĀ
As wildfires have begun to rage across the United States, with smoke spreading as far East as New York City, Americans are enduring the start of an early, and likely grueling fire season. While green tech companies take aim at gaps in satellite tracking and firefighting AI availability (NBC), it may take more than private sector initiative to deliver us from the cycle of drought and forest devastation that poisons our air and strips the earth of carbon-sequestering trees.Ā
Last year's fires scorched 1 in every 25 square feet of California--consider that scale in the context of your living room. For the same reason private firefighting has been almost entirely socialized across the United States, public incentive to protect our land and air provides a crucial alternative channel for innovation and course correction, with outcomes tied to communal safety, rather than profit. Hopefully California's pre-emptive investment of over $700M in additional wildfire safety spend for 2021 can blunt the impact of the in-flight infernos (ABC).Ā
Part of the problem driving our national tinderbox sits at the intersection of shoddy science and US settler colonialism. A healthy North American forest often looks less lush than visitors to heavily protected National or State Parks may expect. That's because, in a natural forest, heavy undergrowth is routinely burned off by small, organically occurring wildfires. With less fuel on the forest floor, fires burn in smaller areas, allowing wildlife to flee, and keeping temperatures low enough for large trees to survive, and pinecones to release their seeds. American Indians have known that small, prescribed burns are productive for forest ecology, and conducted these burns for millennia before the US government largely outlawed them, critically misunderstanding the natural order of the forest. Now, some jurisdictions are allowing and even encouraging so-called "cultural burns", bringing modern wildfirefighting up to speed with the ancient wisdom of the native population (NPR).Ā
The staff doubling in size, adding a new section, and an eph-of-the-week shoutout? Best post yet!