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Vertically Integrated and AI-First
Matt Mandel – Feb 22, 2024
Co-authored with Jared Hecht A new pattern is emerging that we are excited about at USV: entrepreneurs are upgrading physical industries with an AI-first and vertically integrated approach. Instead of selling software to industry incumbents, startups are increasingly deciding to [...] Read more
Making Energy Programmable
Matt Mandel – Dec 13, 2023
We’ve previously written about the storage gap. The proliferation of solar has led to an abundance of energy when the sun is out and a dearth when it’s not. Batteries help address this gap by storing excess energy in times [...] Read more
Paying attention to the climate crisis
Grace Carney – Oct 3, 2023
In March of this year, the IPCC reported that global surface temperature for the years 2011-2020 had reached an average of 1.1°C higher than pre-industrial levels. This unequivocally came as a result of human activity, principally through the emission of [...] Read more
Mind the Storage Gap
Matt Mandel – Jul 31, 2023
Co-authored with Mark Khalil Deployment of renewables has been accelerating globally. In 2022, around 12% of electricity came from wind and solar, compared to less than 3% a decade ago. These resources offer access to low-cost clean energy – but [...] Read more
CarbonChain
Mona Alsubaei – Apr 25, 2023
Co-authored by Rebecca Kaden Of the world’s 2,000 largest public companies, at least 21% now have net-zero commitments. To fulfill these commitments, companies need to understand their full emissions. Despite increased efforts, there are still two major obstacles to comprehensive [...] Read more
Joining the Venture Climate Alliance
Samson Mesele – Apr 25, 2023
At USV we intend to make a meaningful contribution to solving the climate crisis. In addition to making investments from our climate funds, we are committing to track, reduce and offset emissions at both the USV and portfolio levels. To [...] Read more
Noya
Fred Wilson – Apr 11, 2023
USV's climate thesis is to "invest in companies and projects that provide mitigation for or adaptation to the climate crisis." When it comes to mitigation, we believe that capturing carbon and sequestering it is a critical effort. Someone once told [...] Read more
Building Out the Climate Capital Stack
Albert Wenger – Feb 16, 2023
Co-authored by Mona We recently announced that we have started to invest from our second climate fund. Much like our first climate fund this is an early stage fund, making initial investments at the seed and Series A stages. Generally [...] Read more
Mombak
Andy Weissman – Dec 15, 2022
Co-authored by Mona Emissions reduction alone is not enough to address the climate crisis. Carbon removal is an essential part of any solution. In fact, all IPCC 1.5c scenarios feature annual carbon removal at the gigaton level — somewhere between [...] Read more