Sam Smith-Eppsteiner’s Post

Building for the real world -- whatever you want to call it, building in atoms not bits, hardware not software -- is both distinctly challenging and uniquely important. Software is great (we love it, and will leverage it!), but we will need to see significant advances in hardware engineering in order be both an energy abundant and space faring society. 🚀⚡⚙️ That's why Thilo M. Braun and I are looking toward the future of building hardware, particularly in light of what AI can offer here. Read more about what we're excited to see in the next generation of tools for making engineering more efficient and effective across: 1/ Generative design 2/ Simulation 3/ Verification & validation 4/ Design for X (e.g., manufacturing, cost optimization) 5/ Collaboration & design orchestration If you're building in the space, please reach out. We're eager to chat! #hardware #engineeringtools #AI

Congrats to the Optiml team! They're making capex planning + building decarbonization scalable 🏢 🌎🔌

While we're cheering for the rollout of renewable energy (!!), it does create more complexity on the grid. Increased renewables penetration on the grid + extreme energy demand events associated with climate change = energy market volatility. Against that landscape, we are thrilled to announce our investment in ElectronX, a next-generation exchange for trading electricity futures. By enabling both more granularity in trading electricity (smaller time & volume blocks) and direct market access, ElectronX aims to help energy developers and operators better manage risk. We anticipate that better risk management should drive better return profiles, more capital flowing into the renewable assets, and a cleaner grid. Magic! ⚡🔋✨ We're proud to partner with Sam Tegel, CFA, Evan Caron, Philip Krim, Tong Galaxy, and many more in building this much needed infrastructure and catalyst for the clean energy transition -- we couldn't imagine a better team. And excited to invest alongside Adam Rothenberg at BoxGroup, Ali Tamaseb at DCVC, and Sheel Tyle at Amplo. Read more about the market need, company, and what got us excited in our blog post! Josh Rapperport #energy #climatechange #climatetech #electrification

Last week we shared the challenges around the escalating bottleneck on the grid -- now let's talk about solutions. While there are clear needs for policy and structural changes here, we're compelled by the opportunity for startups across planning & pre-construction, orchestration, behind-the-meter generation, and more. If you're building in the space or want to jam on ideas, reach out to me and Josh Rapperport. We need all the brainpower we can get on the topic! ⚡🔋💡 #climatetech #energy #cleanenergytransition #grid

Energy fuels our economy, literally. It has improved quality of life immensely over the past century and will power the next generation of transformative technology. The grid is reaching a real inflection point with the convergence of changes in both supply (generation) and demand (load). Generation is becoming increasingly decentralized and intermittent. Meanwhile, on the load side, we're seeing increases in demand from (1) mass electrification of our economy in the transition away from fossil fuels and (2) rapidly scaling AI. Effectively, we're seeing huge increases in the demand for electricity at a moment where only ~22% of US electricity is generated renewably. We need a lot of innovation in order to meet these increasing electricity needs while hitting our decarbonization goals, and are eager to work with founders tackling the problem. Read more about the problem below + some ideas for ways to solve it next week! Josh Rapperport #decarbonization #energytransition #cleanenergy #renewables #AI #compute #climatetech #energy #electrification

Thrilled to have Tomás Álvarez Belón join the Innovation Endeavors family! To the many opportunities in climate & the physical economy that we'll tackle together 🌍⚡🚜 🚀

Building a generational robotics company is distinctly challenging. Having invested in many over the years, we wanted to share some our key learnings on how to (hopefully!) make the path a bit easier. Headlines here and full blog post below: 1 / Be enabled, not driven, by emerging technological capabilities (said differently: customer-focused) 2 / Pragmatism in what is feasible now (and ambition for what can be down the road) 3 / Don’t let hardware be the bottleneck 4 / Think deeply and creatively about your business model --> Match your business model to customer preferences, margins matter, recurring revenue helps, operations are hard, and this may transition over time 5 / Be clear-eyed about PMF (production > pilot) 6 / Understand and build toward performance 7 / Getting the right team at the right time Thank you to my fellow travelers and teachers Edward Mehr, Arshan Poursohi, Kevin Albert, Jorge Heraud, Lee Redden, and Gautam Narang. Let me know what you think and what we've missed here! And, of course, if you're building in robotics, shoot us a note. We're looking forward to that abundant future! 🤖 🔧 ⛰ ✨ #robotics #companybuilding #entrepreneurship #learnings

If you have a real estate portfolio, check out Optiml and their upcoming product launch on April 4th. This team is building optimization software to help real asset owners answer critical questions around capital expenditure: How to decarbonize? How to drive IRR while doing so? How to comply with new regulations? Optiml is a data-driven tool for real estate investment and renovation planning, both at the asset and portfolio levels. Check it out! 🏫⚡🌎 #realestate #proptech #climatetech #optimization #decarbonization #productlaunch

It's 2024 and climate tech is moving faster and more important than ever. Here are a few macro predictions for what Josh Rapperport and I think will unfold this year: 1/ Corporates get serious about clean electrons 🔌 From PPA buying to geothermal power for commercial real estate, the inflection point for decarbonizing electricity consumption for large companies is here. Rising utility rates, energy price volatility, and shareholder pressure are making these goals a top priority. 2/ AI will go beyond better words, images, and video, and give us better climate technologies ✨ Foundation models, reinforcement learning, and AI-guided design and discovery are reaching massive breakthrough potential. Expect to see advanced solar cells, novel materials, and critical compounds like catalysts and zeolites, discovered or optimized by AI. 3/ Political and geopolitical tension increase both climate uncertainty and the need for energy security 🌎 An election year that could put IRA dollars at risk, escalating conflicts that risk global supply chains (including energy), and massive reshoring and friend-shorting efforts around manufacturing, energy production, and minerals processing means one thing: this year will be a wild ride for the most fundamental inputs into climate tech. 4/ Batteries on the grid go exponential 🔋 Texas has 10xed battery storage in 3 years, and the results are becoming real. For example, in mid-August, a 1.8 GW discharge from batteries into the grid quickly reduced wholesale electricity prices from $5,000 to $2,700 per megawatt hour. We expect other ISOs to follow behind ERCOT. 5/ Nuclear is back ⚡ After an unfortunate multi-decade hiatus, this year will be an unblocking of the dam for affordable electrons beyond renewables. From modular fission reactors to breakthrough evidence of fusion’s potential - and, hopefully, the political willpower to bring these innovations to life - we can expect to see the light for nuclear. #climatetech #climate #vc #tech #2024outlook