Tag: energy

Posted on

‘The Merge’ could be good news for China’s Ethereum enthusiasts

When China banned cryptocurrency mining and trading, many saw it as putting an end to a burgeoning industry in the world’s second-largest economy. As it turned out, the country’s crypto investors, developers, and hobbyists continue to play a critical role in building the backbone and applications of web3.

The Merge, the much-anticipated network update on Ethereum that’s slated to unfold this week, could provide a new way for China’s crypto enthusiasts to participate in the blockchain economy two years after the country began phasing out the lucrative crypto mining industry.

While crypto mining, the process that verifies and adds new transactions to the blockchain using the proof-of-work method, is costly to join and prone to regulatory clampdown, crypto staking, enabled by the Merge, offers enhanced censorship resistance thanks to its low barriers to entry both in terms of cost and the computing power required.

More discreet

The Merge is expected to address one of the biggest criticisms against cryptocurrency — its environmental impact. For China specifically, the transition will also make it harder for regulators to trace participants in the Ethereum network, which has a market cap of over $200 billion as of writing.

Major blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum have been using what’s called the proof-of-work consensus method to validate transactions, where computer servers — or miners — race to solve cryptographic puzzles by consuming massive amounts of power.

Before China banned crypto mining, the country accounted for as much as two-thirds of Bitcoin’s worldwide hash power, the energy consumed to carry out proof-of-work.

But Beijing saw the novel sector as a drag on its economy. In 2019, China added crypto mining to a list of industries to be “eliminated” because they “lacked safe production conditions, seriously wasted resources, polluted the environment,” among other issues. Since then regulators have launched a number of crackdowns on mining, but the industry recently saw a rebound in hash rate after laying low for several months.

It won’t be surprising to see local governments loosening their grip a little as time passes. Crypto mines are often located in backward and landlocked areas of China where there isn’t much economic development for tax revenues otherwise.

But after the Merge, the amount of energy it takes to validate Ethereum transactions will be “indistinguishable”, said Daniel Dizon, co-founder and CEO of Swell Network, an Ethereum staking protocol.

Ethereum will switch to a so-called proof-of-stake mechanism. Servers compete by “staking” their tokens as collateral in the network in order to approve transactions, which is estimated to reduce the blockchain’s power consumption by 99%.

“All you need is basically fairly low computer power, like a computer at home, and the asset itself because it’s proof of the asset that you put at stake,” said Dizon.

The power needed to operate a “node” can be as lightweight as running a Raspberry Pi, the microcomputer originally designed to teach basic computer science in developing countries, Dizon added.

The switch means regulators can no longer detect Ethereum node operators by tracking abnormally high electricity consumption. Proof-of-work, on the other hand, normally takes place at mining farms full of rigs, the set of hardware and processors assembled for crypto mining.

“[A mining facility] is a big place that’s hot and noisy and uses up a lot of energy. It’s kind of hard to miss, right?” said a long-time crypto miner from Singapore who uses the nickname James.

More decentralized

Aside from its environmental impact, crypto mining also incurs exorbitant upfront investments in rigs that could easily cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Proof-of-stake, in comparison, allows anyone with the tokens to start staking right away.

Running a node is one way to join the staking economy, but to be a node operator, one needs to not only have a good dose of technical competency but also own at least 32 ETH, which, as of writing, amounts to $55,648.

That’s why many ETH holders delegate third parties to stake their assets. Centralized crypto exchanges such as Binance and Coinbase allow users to put down any amount by pooling together others’ tokens. But such platforms have mostly left China and removed Chinese users following Beijing’s crackdown. That means if one holds a Chinese passport, they won’t pass the know-your-customer or KYC requirement on a centralized platform that fully abides by Chinese law.

Users who are more crypto-savvy could opt for decentralized protocols, which use algorithms to facilitate peer-to-peer transactions rather than relying on a centralized intermediary, allowing for a higher degree of anonymity. Decentralized options often enable liquid staking, meaning users can access their funds anytime and avoid the custodial risks associated with centralized platforms.

For the technically proficient, it’s possible to operate nodes from China, though the country’s intricate censorship machine could add uncertainties. Nodes need a “good internet connection” to talk to their nearby peers to carry out the validation process, explained Lecky, CTO of Swell. But nodes in China could be on a virtual private network or VPN, which is used to circumvent the Great Firewall by masking their true IP address, making it tricky for nodes to know where exactly their peers are.

Despite these obstacles, China’s crypto users are already jumping on the staking bandwagon. While it’s tricky to put a firm number down, Dizon reckoned a “meaningful” percentage of ETH is held and managed in China, with an upswing in capital inflows into the staking economy expected after the Merge.

“The issue of geography, especially in the context of a permissionless and decentralized network in cyberspace which is effectively what Ethereum is, slightly complicates things when discussing whether assets are truly held or staked ultimately within a specific ‘meatspace’ boundary, i.e. a certain jurisdiction, be it China or otherwise,” the founder added.

Despite crypto ban, China’s tech talent rides the global web3 wave

‘The Merge’ could be good news for China’s Ethereum enthusiasts by Rita Liao originally published on TechCrunch

Posted on

North Korea’s Lazarus hackers are exploiting Log4j flaw to hack US energy companies

Security researchers have linked a new cyber espionage campaign targeting U.S., Canadian and Japanese energy providers to the North Korean state-sponsored Lazarus hacking group.

Threat intelligence company Cisco Talos said Thursday that it has observed Lazarus — also known as APT38 — targeting unnamed energy providers in the United States, Canada and Japan between February and July this year. According to Cisco’s research, the hackers used a year-old vulnerability in Log4j, known as Log4Shell, to compromise internet-exposed VMware Horizon servers to establish an initial footholds onto a victim’s enterprise network, before deploying bespoke malware known as “VSingle” and “YamaBot” to establish long-term persistent access. YamaBot was recently attributed to the Lazarus APT by Japan’s national cyber emergency response team, known as CERT.

Details of this espionage campaign were first revealed by Symanetc in April this year, who attributed the operation to “Stonefly,” another North Korean hacking group that has some overlaps with Lazarus.

However, Cisco Talos also observed a previously unknown remote access trojan — or RAT — named “MagicRAT,” attributed to Lazarus Group, which the hackers use for reconnaissance and stealing credentials.

“The main goal of these attacks was likely to establish long-term access into victim networks to conduct espionage operations in support of North Korean government objectives,” wrote Talos researchers Jung soo An, Asheer Malhotra and Vitor Ventura. “This activity aligns with historical Lazarus intrusions targeting critical infrastructure and energy companies to establish long-term access to siphon off proprietary intellectual property.”

The Lazarus Group is a financially-motivated hacking group backed by the North Korean state that is best known for the high-profile Sony hack in 2016 and the WannaCry ransomware attack in 2017. Lazarus is also driven by efforts to support North Korea’s state objectives, including military research and development and evasion of international sanctions.

However, the group has in recent months turned its attention to blockchain and cryptocurrency organizations. It has been linked to the recent theft of $100 million in crypto assets from Harmony’s Horizon Bridge, and the theft of $625 million in cryptocurrency from the Ronin Network, an Ethereum-based sidechain made for the popular play-to-earn game Axie Infinity.

Pyongyang has long used stolen cryptocurrency and the theft of other information to fund its nuclear weapons program.

In July, the U.S. government offered a $10 million reward for information on members of state-sponsored North Korean threat groups including Lazarus, double the amount that the U.S. State Department announced in April.

The race is on to patch Log4Shell, the bug that’s breaking the internet

North Korea’s Lazarus hackers are exploiting Log4j flaw to hack US energy companies by Carly Page originally published on TechCrunch

Posted on

The YoloBox Pro is a one-stop shop for your live video productions

Somehow, we all became livestreamers during the pandemic, even if it just meant rearranging our office shelves for a better Zoom background. But the pandemic was also a boon for those catering to clients with slightly more advanced needs, such as those who needed dedicated hardware, be that fancy streaming lights, capture cards or entire live production setups. Atem, Elgato and company probably never saw as many searchers on their websites as during the middle of 2020. Another player in this field is YoloLiv, which offers both hardware and software tools for creating livestreaming productions. The company recently launched a number of interesting software updates and sent us its YoloBox Pro to give it a try.

Image Credits: YoloLiv

What makes the YoloLiv boxes stand out is that they are standalone devices that you can use to run a live production with multiple cameras, all without needing a dedicated desktop or laptop to stream.

You can basically think of the YoloBoxes as very thick Android tablets (and they do, in fact, run Android). The Pro version is the flagship model, with an 8-inch screen, three HDMI inputs for bringing in camera feeds, a USB port for connecting a webcam and an SD card reader for bringing in pre-recorded video and saving your recording. There’s also a line in port for bringing in audio and a USB-A port that lets you use the device as a webcam and connect it to a computer and an HDMI out port for a dedicated monitor. To connect the Box to the internet, there’s an Ethernet port for wired connections and Wi-Fi, and there’s even support for LTE connections.

The system runs on a Qualcomm 660 chip and dedicated media encoders, and in my testing, all of that works just as advertised, with up to 60 frames per second.

Image Credits: YoloLiv

The company also offers the 7-inch YoloBox with two HDMI inputs and one USB port for a webcam, but without the ability to use the entire unit as a webcam. The newest member of the family is the 5.5-inch YoloBox Mini, with just one HDMI port and one USB port for adding a webcam. That makes the potential use cases for this a bit limited, but unlike the standard non-Pro YoloBox, you can use it as a webcam.  Most likely, that’s because both the Pro and Mini use Qualcomm’s 660, while the YoloBox uses the less powerful 625 chipset.

The company is also about to release a new box — the Instream — for streamers on Instagram and TikTok, with a focus on vertical video.

As somebody who typically uses OBS or Restream Studio for producing livestreams, moving to the YoloBox took a bit of getting used to. But I can definitely see the appeal of the YoloBox. Setup takes a few minutes. Connecting cameras is a plug-and-play affair — and once you’ve entered your YouTube, Facebook or Twitch credentials, you’re good to go. If you want to get fancy, you can build your own picture-in-picture, side-by-side and split views and easily switch back and forth between them during your show.

Image Credits: YoloLiv

One thing that impressed me is that with every software release during my testing phase, the company launched useful new features. Most recently — and most importantly for somebody who livestreams interviews or podcast recordings — you can now invite people to your shows.

However, if you use the device as a webcam, one thing you have to keep in mind is that there is a slight delay in processing all of the video feeds. We’re talking about maybe half a second, but that’s enough to make conversations harder, and if you don’t feed your audio through the YoloBox but through your computer, it’ll be out of sync. This isn’t the most likely use case for these devices, but it’s worth keeping in mind.

Where the device shines is when you use it to produce a live event. Setting up different views is easy and you simply switch using the touch screen. You can set up lower thirds or any other text on the screen and case it in and out as needed, assign names to presenters, etc. There’s a scoreboard, too, for when you’re streaming your school’s football games. Of course, there are also built-in countdown timers and virtually every other feature you would expect. Writing your lower thirds on the touch screen gets a bit old after a while and I’d like to see more features that would make it easier to recycle them from stream to stream, but that’s a minor issue.

A few days ago, YoloLiv launched version 2.0 of the software package for the Pro, which adds a couple of features that I missed while using the device. The most important of those, at least for me, was the ability to copy, reorder and prioritize overlays, and for those who use it to stream sports (or e-sports), there’s now support for instant replays.

Unsurprisingly, all of this takes a fair bit of energy. The YoloBox Pro is powered by a 10,000 mAh battery, which the company says should last about three hours. I got closer to a bit over two hours in my tests, but I was also trying lots of features at the same time. For some features, including adding guests, YoloLiv recommends that you don’t use an external webcam but only the HDMI inputs, and in my experience, that’s correct. The webcam seems to need quite a bit more compute power, and some of these new features do push the device to its limits.

Still, I’ve been impressed by how the company is obviously listening to user feedback and improves the device with every update.

There is clearly a space for a device like this. At almost $1,300, you’re either a very dedicated amateur or maybe a nonprofit that doesn’t need a larger setup, but if you’re good with the number of inputs, I can’t really think of another easily portable solution like this (unless you want to bring a laptop and switcher and a lot more gear). I’m sure professionals will always prefer the hardware controls of an ATEM Mini Pro from Blackmagic (or its larger brethren). But as an all-in-one device, the YoloBox Pro doesn’t really have a lot of competition right now.

The YoloBox Pro is a one-stop shop for your live video productions by Frederic Lardinois originally published on TechCrunch

Posted on

One startup’s solution to the carbon-offsetting mess: downgrade the ‘middle-men’ resellers

As well as the traditional carbon offset resellers and exchanges such as Climate Partner or Climate Impact X the tech space has also produced a few, including Patch (US-based, raised $26.5M) and Lune (UK-based, raised $4M).

Now, Ceezer, a B2B marketplace for carbon credits, has closed a €4.2M round, led by Carbon Removal Partners with participation of impact-VC Norrsken VC and with existing investor Picus Capital. 

Ceezer ’s pitch is that companies have to deal with a lot of complexity when considering how they address carbon removal and reduction associated with their businesses. Whie they can buy offsetting credits, the market remains pretty ‘wild-west’, and has multiple competing standards running in parallel. For instance, the price range of $5 to $500 per ton is clearly all over the place, and sometimes carbon offset resellers make buyers pay high prices for low-quality carbon credits, pulling in extra revenues from a very opaque market.

The startup’s offering is for corporates to integrate both carbon removal and avoidance credits in one package. It does this by mining the offsetting market for lots of data points, enabling carbon offset sellers to reach buyers without having to use these middle-men resellers.

The startup claims that sellers no longer waste time and money on bespoke contracts with corporates but instead use Ceezer’s legal framework for all transactions. Simultaneously, buyers can access credits at a primary market level, maximizing the effect of the dollars they spend on carbon offsets.

Ceezer says it now has over 50 corporate customers and has 200,000 tons of carbon credits to sell across a variety of categories.
 and will use the funds to expand its impact and sourcing team, the idea being to make carbon removal technologies more accessible to corporate buyers, plus widen the product offering for credit sellers and buyers.

Posted on

Disdain for NFTs in video games is part of a slow green revolution

There has been stiff backlash against NFTs in video games since they first started popping up. In general, both gamers as well as industry professionals have disapproved blockchain implementations in video games, mostly over concerns over the environmental impact that the technology has.

But NFTs aside, the video game industry is often left out when we talk about industries that have a major impact on the environment. However, some in the industry have been taking steps to ensure that the industry goes greener.

With indie development growing more commonplace these days, the number of video games coming out every month is higher than ever. And as the industry grows, so does its impact on society. While indie studios are typically a risky bet for investments, parts of the cohort have attracted interest, especially NFT games in 2021. Given the impact the underlying technology has had on the environment, we felt it would be apt to more closely examine the entire video game industry’s impact.

Posted on

TechCrunch+ roundup: Gen Z VCs, choosing a GTM model, crypto crisis communication tips

I’ve always wondered who gets to name demographic cohorts.

My parents were pre-Baby Boomers, which made them part of the Silent Generation. (I’m Generation X, so feel free to ignore me entirely.)

Generation Z is stereotyped as being materialistic, mistrustful and extremely reliant on personal technology. And now that they are entering the ranks of venture capital, one investor says those traits are informing how deals are made.

Full TechCrunch+ articles are only available to members.
Use discount code TCPLUSROUNDUP to save 20% off a one- or two-year subscription.

Tech investors born after 1996 “have raised funds, garnered social media followings and profited from the Gen Z mentality,” says Andrew Chan, a senior associate at Builders VC.

However, “Gen Z, no matter how you slice it, are still a bunch of kids. Myself included,” he notes in a TC+ guest post. “Good for them. I don’t want to be any part of it.”

According to Chan, too many investors his age rely on “youth, group-think identification and confidence as a substitute for hard work and experience.”

“It might work for now, but if that’s success for my generation of venture capitalists, then I would have rather stayed in my happy little bubble writing geochemistry code at NASA JPL.”

Thanks very much for reading,

Walter Thompson
Editorial Manager, TechCrunch+
@yourprotagonist

A Gen Z VC speaks up: Why Gen Z VCs are trash

6 ways to make sure your startup is using the right GTM model

Group of adults carrying boxes; go to market gtm strategy

Image Credits: Klaus Vedfelt (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Years ago, I borrowed a road bicycle from an acquaintance for a day of touring. It was a mistake.

I’d never used a 10-speed bike before, so I wasted time and energy struggling to ascend hills, much like a startup with a go-to-market model that doesn’t match the stage of their business.

“Before you start scaling any kind of sales model, you need a pipeline to support it,” according to Ali Mitchell and Laura Yao, partners at EQT Ventures,

Getting GTM right is more than following basic best practices: You also need to know “what to do and when to do it.”

6 ways to make sure your startup is using the right GTM model

How to communicate to your crypto community when things aren’t going well

Coffee spilled on carpet; communicating with crypto communities

Image Credits: Peter Dazeley (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Because it’s a nascent industry that’s largely unregulated, crypto companies are not generally skilled at crisis communications, and I’m being generous.

When a bank or financial services company experiences a massive security failure or a volatility shock, federal laws dictate how it must communicate with its customers. Crypto startups, however, must rely on their own best judgment.

“There’s little benefit in declaring that the sky is falling and begging your community for investment, but an overly rosy outlook won’t fool anyone either,” says Tahem Verma, co-founder and CEO of Mesha.

How to communicate with your crypto community when things aren’t going well

The majority of early-stage VC deals fall apart in due diligence

Illustration of a magnifying glass examining charts with businesspeople standing in the foreground.

Image Credits: z_wei (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

It’s amazing how frequently investors say “no” to startup founders: If 100 early-stage entrepreneurs pitch a VC, maybe three of them will be lucky to get a second meeting.

To find out why simple due diligence is the end of the line for so many hopeful founders, Haje Jan Kamps interviewed Axel Bichara and Tyler Mincey of VC firm Baukunst.

“If you feel the need to write a script and prepare for everything to make a good impression, it’s probably not going to work,” said Bichara.

The majority of early-stage VC deals fall apart in due diligence

Investors detail their red (and green) flags for startups seeking venture dollars

Image of red flags against a blue sky.

Image Credits: David Zaitz (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

To be clear: Most investors want to say “yes.” No one becomes a venture capitalist just so they can stomp on someone’s dreams.

Reporter Rebecca Bellan spoke to several who specialize in climate tech and mobility to learn more about how their thesis has shifted in recent months, and what that means for startups seeking follow-on funding:

  • George Kellerman, head of investments and acquisitions, Woven Capital
  • Nate Jaret, general partner, Maniv Mobility
  • Alexandra Harbour, principal, Prelude Ventures
  • Cassie Bowe, partner, Energy Impact Partners
  • Andrea Walne, general partner at Manhattan Venture Partners

“Investors are homing in on their thesis discipline as the biggest driver for diligence in today’s environment,” said Walne.

Investors detail their red (and green) flags for startups seeking venture dollars

Posted on

Honda and LG Energy plan to build a $4.4 billion lithium-ion plant in the US

Honda is the latest car company with plans to manufacture lithium-ion batteries in the U.S.

The automaker said Monday it is forming a joint venture with LG Energy Solutions to supply the North American market with “pouch type” batteries to power electric vehicles from its Honda and Acura brands. A location for the $4.4 billion factory has not been announced.

The joint venture, which is scheduled to begin by the end of the year subject to regulatory approval, aims to start construction in early 2023 and the mass production of advanced lithium-ion battery cells by the end of 2025.

“Honda is committed to the local procurement of EV batteries which is a critical component of EVs,” Honda CEO and President Toshihiro Mibe said in a statement. “This initiative in the U.S. with LGES, the leading global battery manufacturer, will be part of such a Honda approach.”

The $40 billion in tax credits included in the Inflation Reduction Act passed by Congress this month seems to have accelerated the automotive industry’s dash to bring battery manufacturing onshore. Establishing a robust domestic supply chain will ultimately help electric vehicle manufacturers control costs and reduce dependence on foreign infrastructure and materials.

On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Panasonic is eyeing Oklahoma as the site for a lithium-ion battery plant that would supply Tesla with high-capacity batteries. That’s in addition to plans the Japanese electronics maker unveiled last month for a $4 billion plant in Kansas. Officials said it will be one of the largest lithium-ion battery factories in the world and the largest-ever economic development project in Kansas.

Georgia has been especially aggressive in recruitment efforts to establish a battery ecosystem. The State awarded Rivian $1.5 billion in incentives – its largest-ever package – to build a 2,000-acre plant east of Atlanta. Hyundai’s $5.5 billion new EV plant and battery manufacturing facility outside of Savannah represents the largest economic development deal recruited by Georgia.

Toyota plans to open its first U.S. battery factory — a $1.3 billion plant near Greensboro, North Carolina ­—in 2025. Canoo, which moved its headquarters to Bentonville, Arkansas, has plans to build an EV factory in Oklahoma.

 

Posted on

Why the ‘last click’ in e-commerce matters — and how to get it right

Maju Kuruvilla Contributor
Maju Kuruvilla is the CEO of Bolt. Prior to Bolt, Maju was the VP and GM for Amazon’s Global Logistics, managing its business unit spanning business, product, engineering and operations.

What is the biggest and most obvious problem facing e-commerce retailers?

Checkout. By that, I mean customers who find their way to a retailer’s digital home, decide to buy an item, add the item to cart and press checkout — only to quit the last part of the transaction.

This seems like a small issue, but in fact, it is an enormous cost for retailers — to the tune of billions of dollars by some industry estimates. Yet, despite the size of the checkout problem, fixing the issue also ends up as the last item on many to-do lists.

That’s partly because checkout is at the bottom of the funnel. At the top of the funnel are the big-ticket, splashy items: Ad campaigns, paid traffic, product-market fit, media relations, and everything that feels weighty and important.

Companies spend time, money and energy getting people in the door, building meaningful products and services, and keeping those people in their e-commerce ecosystem. Generally, marketing teams control many of those aforementioned levers — they do paid social, SEO and SEM marketing, billboards and all the other campaigns that bring customers in.

Every dollar of marketing at the top of the funnel can be augmented by a focus on checkout.

At the bottom of the funnel are technical and product teams, and usually someone responsible for payment infrastructure. Those people tend to be graded on whether things work — not necessarily how well they work.

Thus, checkout becomes an orphan: Neither the explicit focus of the marketing team, nor a key area of interest for product and technical leads. And all the while, customers shop without buying — they exhibit high “purchase intent” but neglect to make actual purchases.

To put it more simply: You may have perfected the top of the funnel, but you very well could have missed the gaps in the bottom.

But in a world of scarce resources and scarcer time, how can you get senior leadership to rally around lost conversion and broken checkout as a key area of strategic focus?

The following five steps might help you fix the “last click”problem:

Reframe checkout as a marketing opportunity not a product problem

Think of checkout like this: The top of the funnel is low-performing marketing spend, and the bottom of the funnel is high-performing marketing spend.

Posted on

This new $100M fund plans to focus on startups accelerating the science around longevity

Longevity-focused startups have been proliferating in recent years as we become more focused on our health. However, it’s not just about apps to get you in the gym. Longevity startups can range from biotech-oriented disease prevention, even to organ regeneration. The Aging Analytics Agency estimates that global investments in longevity-focused startups hit more than $40bn in 2021, and the market could grow to $600bn by 2025, according to Bank of America.

Now investors like Apollo Health are raising large sums – such as their $180m fund in November, while Maximon, Swiss longevity company builder, raised a €96m fund, to name just two in Europe.

Now, coming out of the US, is a new fund to join the fray.

New York-based Life Extension Ventures is a new $100 million fund saying it will focus on “longevity for people and planet”. In practice that will mean backing founders who are accelerating the science around longevity.

That includes areas such as people, animals, agriculture, food, energy, and transportation, as well as AI, direct-to-consumer, Web3, infrastructure-as-a-service, platforms, and marketplaces.

Luckily, the fund’s founders will know what they are talking about as the team has multiple science PhDs, successful startups and Angel investing under their belts.

Life Extension’s LPs include founders and investors from other VCs, unicorn founders, and large institutions.

The team includes Dr. Inaki Berenguer, the co-founder of Life Extension, who studied at MIT and Columbia, before founding Pixable (acquired by Singtel) and CoverWallet (acquired by Aon in 2020).

Co-founder Dr. Amol Sarva studied cognitive science at Stanford and Columbia, and taught entrepreneurship at Columbia. He is also gave WeWork a run for its money with flexible office unicorn Knotel, and also started Peek (acquired by SoftBank.)

The pair have previously made angel investments in startups such as Galatea Bio, a DNA databank for genomic discovery; DeepCell the computer vision company that uses AI to create a database of cell morphology, which has raised $100mm; and Particle Health, which raised $40mm.

Over a call Sarva told me: “There was a clean Tech 1.0, a clean Tech 2.0, and something similar is happening in the Biotech universe now. Software has now come to intersect with science in a new and different way and it makes the opportunity more like tech.”

Berenguer added: “We are going to focus on the software and data-driven companies in this category. Most of the entrepreneurs that we are going to back are not the typical biologist in a lab doing experiments. They are going to simulate experiments, they are going to analyze that data. They’re going to, for instance, commercialize using API’s within marketplaces. So it’s very similar to what happened with the internet 20 years ago.”

Sarva went on: “The future of humanity depends certainly on what we do for people, but also for the planet we live on. It’s and it’s the same. It’s the same technologies and science. That’s having an impact. It’s biology and chemistry. It’s having an impact on people on agriculture, food, even energy production. This cutting edge science is really the key to it all. And so we decided, let’s go find where science and software intersect. That’s going to have a huge impact.”

Headquartered in New York, the fund will also have team members in Madrid, London and San Francisco.

Posted on

Tesla doesn’t need to hit the panic button over China heat wave disruptions just yet

Some parts of China are suffering from record high temperatures in the past few weeks, prompting local governments to halt industrial power use, including those of battery plants.

When news reaches the West, it generates fear-mongering headlines like “China heat wave shuts Tesla suppliers” which have likely rattled investors (because Tesla is all we care about, right?). But is the EV giant really suffering from China’s scorching heat?

First off, we need to look at which factories are affected. Lithium battery giant CATL is among the companies that have been ordered to shut down production in the landlocked province of Sichuan, according to a local media report. The pause, which lasts from August 15 to 20, is part of the province’s effort to ration electricity as it suffers from a devastating drought and heat wave.

While CATL, a major battery supplier to Tesla, might have trouble fulfilling some orders for customers, there’s no indication that Tesla is the one to bear the cost. For one, CATL has production plants all over China, from Guangdong, Jiangsu to Shanghai, so it’s unlikely that a temporary, regional rest — even though six days may seem long in the auto industry — will collapse the multi-billion business’ well-oiled supply chain.

Suppliers are also more likely to prioritize demand coming from Tesla because of its reputation and sheer volume. The American firm was the third-best-selling electric carmaker in China in the first half of 2021, according to an auto industry association.

“In China, Tesla enjoys a privilege just like Apple with all the manufacturers clamoring to be its suppliers. Even if production is restricted, it’s very likely that suppliers will prioritize Tesla’s orders while putting others’ on hold,” a Tesla parts supplier told TechCrunch.

The supply chains for Tesla and its local EV rivals like Xpeng and Nio are concentrated in manufacturing hubs around the Pearl River Delta, which include megacities like Guangzhou and Shenzhen, as well as the Yangtze Delta, which is home to Tesla’s Gigafactory in Shanghai and scores of chip makers around Suzhou, an employee at a Chinese EV startup pointed out to us.

Shanghai has been a victim of China’s recent heat wave, though there are no signs that the weather is stopping production at Gigafactory yet.

Shanghai already had its tough times in spring when a two-month-long COVID-19 outbreak forced Gigafactory to halt production twice.

Precisely due to these sporadic COVID-induced shutdowns over the past two years, “suppliers have become a lot more flexible,” the Tesla supplier said. “Many large manufacturers are stocking up on supplies to create a buffer for absorbing COVID shocks.”

Lastly, it’s worth noting that China is gathering steam to recover its sluggish economy at all costs. And it’s likely that industries that have been designated as the state planner’s top priorities, such as the EV sector, will receive more support when resources are limited.

As the heat wave tests the country’s ability to keep its manufacturing running, vice premier Hang Zheng highlighted “the importance of the energy and power supply for social and economic stability.”

“The country will also beef up policy support and take multi-pronged measures to help related enterprises address difficulties,” Han added.

Tesla closes Shanghai Gigafactory for two days as Covid cases spike in China