Funding on 🔥 ... for climate tech & 1 surprising startup
Necessary Nuggets
Happy Wednesday! If you’re new here, welcome to Necessary Nuggets, your one-stop pre-seed shop. We deliver updates from Necessary Ventures and helpful tidbits on our little corner of the world. Every edition is also on our blog.
Jobortunities 🚨
✨NEW FEATURED ROLE✨
Necessary Ventures: If you love this newsletter, we think you might like investing in what the world needs too. We have full-time and part-time opportunities to think early stage and have an impact on solving founders’ problems.
| Investor |
Taro: Taro increases access to healthcare while reducing costs and physician burnout via direct primary care based health insurance.
| Product Engineer |
Arc Boats: Electrify watercraft. Build the Tesla of boats. Arc’s aim is both sustainability and high performance. Arc is currently accepting internship applications, so go ahead and forward this to every engineering student you know.
Reach out with any questions! All 155 open job postings are listed here.
Market Stirrings 🚩
Does nobody care about impact anymore? Based on PitchBook data, impact investing nearly hit a 10-year all-time low in 2023, racking in a measly $43.8 billion. 2023 witnessed a 71% drop from the previous year’s capital raised and was only 4% higher than the fundraising pit in 2013. With the increase in AI deals, impact investing is no longer the shiny new VC toy, and it’s safe to say it suffered more heavily due to the downturn year.
Good Reads 📖
For the rushed reader …
The Biden administration is going head-to-head with heavy industry, spending up to $6 billion to decarbonize industrial plants.
A new angel-style VC, Silence, has raised $35 million to invest in clean tech startups from pre-seed to Series A.
Google and XPrize are urging individuals to quantinue their search for impactful applications in quantum computing and are granting a $5 million prize to anyone that comes up with use cases.
For the less rushed reader …
GREEN GETS MORE GREEN: Renewable energy tech is reenergized yet again with new regulation pouring more funding into the sector. The Biden administration is going head-to-head with heavy industry, spending up to $6 billion to decarbonize industrial plants. It’s not as much as you think; that’s only 3% of Jeff Bezos’ net worth. The Department of Energy will partially fund 33 different projects across 20 states with the goal of demonstrating novel technologies that can scale up rapidly and clean up manufacturing in the U.S. Heavy industry is burning up and accounts for nearly one-quarter of all emissions. It’s about time the U.S. cemented additional funding for climate tech, and hopefully companies in a position to tidy up factories take advantage of this steel.
LOUD SILENCE: It’s raining for climate tech. Capitalizing on the current climate of climate, a new angel-style VC, Silence, has raised $35 million to invest in clean tech startups from pre-seed to Series A. Silence is searching for new investments to follow up on its first close. The team is led by Borja Moreno de los Rios, who was a venture partner at FJ labs and previously founded Merlin, an hourly jobs marketplace. The firm writes smaller checks, $300k on average, and typically participates in rounds alongside larger, well-known VCs. Silence is focused on SaaS and marketplaces rather than deep tech investments with longer timeframes – a refreshing concentration compared to most climate funds. This could be the first time ever startup founders give a pitch and hope to be met with Silence.
QUANT KEEP UP: Quantum computing might be on the backburner for some, but the race to innovate is heating up. Google and XPrize are urging individuals to quantinue their search for impactful applications, granting a $5 million prize to anyone that comes up with additional use cases. Scientists see the greatest potential commercial impact in chemistry, materials science, and pharma, but the costs (such as destroying internet security) have so far outweighed the benefits. The IEEE Spectrum article above takes a stab at identifying six actual use cases in industry, such as drug metabolism, carbon dioxide sequestration, and alternate battery cathodes, among others. Undeniably, discovery doesn’t happen in a day, and it’s up to researchers, students, and founders alike to hold the quantum torch. Can GenZ ditch TikTok fame in time to ignite the Quantum Age?
Fire Up the Pre-Seeds🔥
Notable pre-seed raises in …
artificial intelligence
0G Labs - Soaring in web3 space
The Problem: On-chain AI systems in the web3 ecosystem are met with slow speeds and less cost efficiency.
The Tech: Modular web3 infrastructure tailored to AI, allowing developers to choose their components for building a blockchain system or application.
Recently Raised: A whopping $35 million in funding led by Hack VC, with participation from over 40 crypto-native institutions.
Also Note: The startup originally set out to raise $5 million, but the founders were met with substantial interest after choosing their lead investor.
InnovationForce - AI invades innovation
The Problem: Adoption of new technologies into the customer environment and market broadly tends to be an inefficient process.
The Tech: An AI-enhanced software platform that helps companies collect and evaluate potential ideas, track projects in progress, and monitor performance.
Recently Raised: An undisclosed amount in funding (reportedly oversubscribed) led by the Sondergaard Group.
Also Note: The startup was founded by former energy industry exec Kim Getgen and her Harvard Business School professor Linda Hill. InnovationForce was also featured as one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies.
Outro🚪
Feel free to reply to this email with all questions, feedback, or comments. We’ll be iterating and curating the NVTC newsletter according to your interests.
Some last matters of business:
If you’re a technologist (engineer or product manager / designer with a technical background) join us on the NVTC LinkedIn group if you haven’t. We’d love to have you!
Sign up here if you’re interested in co-investing with Necessary.
If you’re a startup founder, we’d love to help where we can! Brex provides full-stack finance solutions for startups. Sign up via Necessary and get bonus points.
Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
© 2024 Necessary Ventures
San Francisco, California