Climate

Prediction Capital hits first close of €30M for new fund to back startups addressing UN SDGs • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 11, 2022Posted in Climate, impact investing, VentureNo Comments

Another day, another dollar, and another VC fund launches. But, refreshingly, this one will specifically address the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Prediction Capital is a new VC sprung out of the Swiss Family Office infinitas Capital, the investment firm of former entrepreneur and investor Robin Lauber, and formed together with Christopher Chuffart and Kilian Graulich. The fund, which has hit its first close of €30M, will focus on startups covering ConsumerTech and FinTech mainly in the German-speaking DACH region. Another focus will be on businesses that embrace the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular Good Health and Wellbeing, Quality Education, Gender Equality, Decent Work and Economic Growth, Reduced Inequalities, Responsible Consumption and Production, Climate Action, Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions and Partnerships for the Goals. So far it’s invested in Heritas, Foodetective (Online Infrastructure & Intelligence of the Merchant Industry, raised $2M) and House of Change. Lauber has been in real estate but also brought Dunkin’ Donuts to Switzerland where he successfully exited the business in 2020. Chuffart was most recently at Mountain Partners, a Zurich based VC before moving to i2i Logic (Australian corporate finance FinTech) to open their European HQ. Graulich is former McKinsey & Company.

Airly fights air pollution with a network of affordable sensors • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 10, 2022Posted in Climate, StartupsNo Comments

Cleantech startup Airly wants to help communities around the world improve air quality with affordable sensors and software that provides actionable insights. Based in London and Krakow, the startup announced today it has raised $5.5 million. The round was led by firstminute capital and Pi Labs, with participation from returning investors like the Sir Richard Branson Family Office, AENU and Untitled. New investors include Cal Henderson, one of Slack’s co-founders, Snowflake co-founder Marcin Zukowki and institutional investors Semapa Next and TO Ventures. This brings Airly’s total raised to $8.8 million since March 2021. Airly is currently used by more than 500 local authorities in over 40 countries, with 5,000 of its sensors covering a total of 40,000 active measurement points. Cities include Warsaw, where Airly has installed 165 sensors, which the company says is the largest air quality monitoring network in Europe. It also has networks of sensors in United Kingdom and Indonesia cities. So far, Airly has struck trategic partnerships with JCDecaux, NHS, NILU (Norwegian Institute for Air Research). It is also partnered with the DivAirCity project, which is funded by European Union’s Horizon 2020. Airly plans to build a dashboard that will allow users to monitor more data and get insights on how air quality is affecting health, and how to improve it. It will include a report generator, insights, impact tracker and city ranking. An online map and mobile apps already lets people in a community check the air quality around them based on Airly’s data. Airly started after co-founder and CEO Wiktor Warchalowski and two of his friends at AGH Technical University of Krakow were training for a marathon. “During the course of our training, we found it hard to cope with the intensity and realized it was down to air pollution,” he told ZebethMedia. “So we devised a system using our own air quality sensors to tell us where the cleanest air was and we used those spaces for our training.” Airly founders Michał Misiek, Wiktor Warchałowski and Aleksander Konior After realizing that other people had the same problem, they started building the Airly platform to monitor real-time air quality. State-owned air quality monitoring stations are usually only affordable for large cities, Warchalowski explained, and since they are expensive, there are often only three to five covering large expanses of land. Not only that, but they typically have a delay of several hours in reporting data. Airly wants to solve that problem with affordable sensors that are easy to install, so one can be on every street in a city. They also send data to Airly’s app every five minutes, so air quality can be monitored in real time. The platform’s insights help communities gauge real-time health risks of poor air quality, based on WHO standards or illegal emissions. It analyzes trends to identify sources of pollution, and gives recommendations on how to improve air quality. For example, it can tell communities if they should implement low-emission zones, solid fuel bans and green school streets. It also tracks improvements once those measures are made. A couple examples of how Airly has been used include the #LetSchoolsBreathe campaign in the United Kingdom, where Airly’s monitors were installed in 50 schools. It’s also helped a large city in Central Europe get evidence that fuel combustion-free zones were working as planned. Communities have used data collected by Airly to lobby local governments to take air quality action. “On a macro scale, our data has repeatedly become an incentive to change local policy in terms of reducing the use of solid fuels, car traffic or influencing local polluters,” Warchalowski said. “Airly supports organizations in their journey to eliminate pollution, improve air quality and protect public health as the data is the first step toward pollution-free cities and communities. You can’t control what you can’t measure.” Airly currently has 500 paying customers and uses a “sensing-as-a-service” model. Customers pay a yearly subscription based on how many nodes they access, and pricing starts from $540 per node per year. There’s a one time setup fee for installing devices. One of Airly’s main competitors is Breezometer, which was ( acquired in September by GOogle. Breezometer’s competitive advantage is the breadth of its air quality network coverage, which stretches across more than 100 countries and has a resolution of five meters. But Breezometer’s is not able to provide the hyperlocal insights that Airly can, said Warchalowski. Another competitor is Clarity, which is also building an end-to-end air quality and control platform with software and hardware. But Airly has a wider set of pollutant measures and it also delivers recommendations based on data. Airly will use its new funding on research and development and to expand into new markets. In a statement about the funding, Founders Fund and firstminute capital co-founder and executive chairman Brent Hoberman said, “Trailblazers in London are showing how real-time local air quality data is the catalyst for taking action to make our urban spaces healthier and more sustainable. I expect many cities and local authorities to follow their leadership, starting with more precise and local data. Airly is at the forefront of building this data infrastructure and our fight against air pollution, and we’re very proud to continue our support by co-leading their Series A.”

Lyft-backed plan to fund electric cars flops in California • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 10, 2022Posted in Climate, electric vehicles, Gavin Newsom, Lyft, Michael Moritz, Ron Conway, TransportationNo Comments

California voters shot down a plan to make electric vehicles more affordable for some residents, dealing a blow to Lyft and the EV industry alike. Proposition 30 would have taxed residents making more than $2 million a year to subsidize electric cars and public charging stations as well as funded wildfire prevention programs. Even with just 41% of the votes tallies so far, the defeat was clear. As of Wednesday afternoon, some 59% of voters rejected the proposition. The measure’s defeat comes as several states ready bans on gas-powered vehicles in urgent efforts to cut climate pollution. Prop 30’s primary backer was Lyft, which paid more than $48 million to support the would-be wealth tax. The measure’s opponents — which included Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom and venture capitalists Michael Moritz and Ron Conway — cast Prop 30 as a “Lyft grift,” calling it a “scheme to further line the pockets of Silicon Valley tech billionaires.” Yet, Prop 30 did not include carve-outs for ride-share companies. It would have raised tens of billions of dollars to push down the price of electric cars for individuals, including drivers for ride apps like Lyft and Uber. Both companies have committed to going electric by 2030, and this measure could have helped them hit their targets. Earlier this year, California mandated that nearly all ride-share vehicles go electric by 2030, as part of a broader effort to gradually push combustion engines off roads. Although the state already operates some programs to help cover the cost of going electric, Prop 30 could have provided further assistance. Without it, ride-app companies may be forced to fork up additional cash, one way or another, to incentivize their drivers to switch, so they’ll comply with the state’s mandate. Though more affordable options are gradually coming to market, electric vehicles are generally still in short supply, and most are too pricey up front for most people. This is no good for the climate, because light-duty vehicles like cars and SUVs make up more than half of transportation-related emissions in the U.S., per the EPA. On the NASDAQ, Lyft closed at $10.64, down by almost 2.4% from the prior day. The decline pales in comparison to the nosedive Lyft shareholders suffered on Monday, after disclosing hefty losses in its latest quarterly report. Earlier this month, Lyft laid off 683 employees, or about 13% of its workforce.

Early results show defeat for California Prop 30, a plan to tax the rich and fund EVs • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 9, 2022Posted in Climate, electric vehicles, EV charging, Lyft, TransportationNo Comments

Californians seem to be voting against a proposal on the midterm election ballot that would tax the wealthiest Californians to help pay for electric vehicle tax incentives and EV charging infrastructure in the state. With about 53% of the state’s votes counted, Proposition 30 was losing 57.3% to 42.7%, according to California’s Secretary of State. California is already a leader in promoting a shift to electric cars and was the first state to ban the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035. Proposition 30, as the ballot proposal is called, promises to accelerate that shift by adding an additional 1.75% tax on incomes above $2 million. Aside from helping Californians, particularly low-income residents, shift to EVs, 20% of the funds would be used to pay for wildfire prevention and firefighter training. Ride-hailing company Lyft backed Prop. 30, contributing 95% of the campaign’s total funding, or $45 million. Lyft aims to have 100% of the vehicles on its platform be electric by 2030, so making EV incentives more available to low-income drivers would massively benefit the company. Lyft, which recently laid off 13% of workers, didn’t hit revenue and active rider targets in its third quarter earnings, causing its stock to fall and investors to fear the ride-hailing company is ceding too much ground to competitor Uber. Opponents of the ballot, including California’s Governor Gavin Newsom, claim Lyft just wants to benefit itself at the expense of the rich. They argue it requires taxpayers to pay for EV subsidies that Lyft, as well as Uber, would have to pay on their own come 2030, when California law stipulates rideshare companies need EVs to account for 90% of their vehicle miles traveled. Curiously, Uber has stayed quiet on the matter. “Prop. 30 is being advertised as a climate initiative,” Newsom says in an advertisement slating the proposal. “But in reality, it was devised by a single corporation to funnel state income taxes to benefit their company. Put simply, Prop. 30 is a Trojan Horse that puts corporate welfare above the fiscal welfare of our entire state.” The California Democratic party, of which Newsom is a member, endorsed the ballot proposal. Newsom has teamed up with the Chamber of Commerce and other billionaires to oppose a proposal that they think will cause wealthy Californians to leave the state. Labor groups and environmentalists are defending the measure.

Humble keeps excess inventory out of the Philippines’ landfills • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 8, 2022Posted in circular economy, Climate, green, Humble Sustainability, Philippines, recycling, seedstars, Southeast Asia, StartupsNo Comments

Excess inventory, including returned items, from e-commerce, logistics and retail companies often ends up being disposed. Manila-based Humble Sustainability is a circular economy startup that wants to keep it out of the Philippines’ landfills. Since its launch, it has processed more than 150,000 items like clothing, consumer electronics and household appliances that are either resold through Thrift, its Shopee storefront, or passed onto B2B recyclers and resellers. The company announced today it has raised $750,000 in an oversubscribed seed round led by Seedstars International Ventures, with participation from iSeed Ventures and angel investors including Ula co-founder Alan Wong, Sagar Achanta (who has held product leadership roles at Amazon), Booking.com and Disney+, and investors Paco Sandejas and Richard Eldridge. Humble will use the funding to expand its network of partners and buyers, and grow its team, including hiring department heads. The company also plans to bring its tech development fully in-house and start work on long-term initiatives like a carbon footprint tracker. Humble Sustainability founders Niña Opida and Josef Werker. Image Credits: Humble Sustainability Humble was founded in 2021 by CEO Josef Werker and COO Niña Opida. Werker told ZebethMedia that the two met five years ago, after holding leadership positions at different startups, and wanted to see how tech innovation could be applied to the planet. The first version of Humble was a circular trading solution for children’s clothing, before it expanded into other items. “Neither of us are environmental scientists or sustainability experts at all,” Werker said. “We simply had a love for the earth and spotted an opportunity to apply our little experience of building businesses towards it.” Humble has worked with 20 companies so far. The process of getting items starts by receiving inventory for assessment, so Humble can see what condition they are in and figure out their value (as the company grows, it will automate parts of the quality control process). Then it decides whether to list items on Thrift, or sell them in bulk to its B2B network. Once their plans are approved, they sign an agreement with clients, who can monitor the status of their items and receive money from their sales. Humble plans to launch a live dashboard on its B2B platform so clients can track revenue, inventory and environmental impact in real time. Werker says without Humble, unwanted inventory would either go to a traditional liquidator (for higher-value items) or end up in a landfill. There are other solutions like internal employee sales, but those only account for a small percentage. “With Humble, it’s full consolidated,” he said. “We will take everything, ensuring that nothing ends up in a landfill. The good-quality items are on Thrift and high value is extracted, everything else is properly brought back into circularity through our B2B network and we will extract value that can be passed back to the client.” All of the investors in Humble’s seed round are actively involved in the business. For example, Seedstars introduced Humble to people its international network that the company has closed deals with, said Werker. Humble is also participating in Seedstars’ three-month growth track program. Wong and Achanta have worked together at different companies, including Amazon, Booking.com and Ula and are guiding Humble with advice on its tech development and long-term roadmap. In a statement, Seedstars partner Patricia Sosrodjojo said, “We are delighted to support Humble in the journey to reduce waste and promote circular living. Humble is a great fit to Seedstars’ thesis of supporting early-stage companies that can create meaningful impact with an attractive business model.”

Carbon cap and trade for developing world could spur massive investments — if it works • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 8, 2022Posted in cap and trade, carbon emissions, Climate, EC Food Climate and Sustainability, Government & PolicyNo Comments

Ten years after a cap-and-trade scheme championed in part by John Kerry was unceremoniously killed by one of his colleagues across the aisle, the former senator turned climate envoy is once again pitching the policy as a solution to climate change. As an idea, cap and trade isn’t bad! It works by having governments cap pollution levels and allot limited permits to polluters so they figure out how best to clean things up. Oftentimes the answer is better technology. Other times the answer is to buy permits from other companies that have done a better job at cutting their emissions. Over time, the number of permits gets ratcheted down and pollution levels drop. As a policy, cap and trade has been widely applied, in many cases successfully. The U.S. used one in the 1980s to successfully slash sulfur dioxide pollution that was causing acid rain and again in the 2000s to cut levels of nitrogen oxides. The EU is currently using one to trim its carbon emissions, and there are a few regional systems in North America. Kerry’s new proposal, as reported by the Financial Times, hopes to use cap and trade to encourage investment in the power sectors of developing countries. It’s a policy that’s heading in the right direction, though with enough missing pieces to have me wondering whether it’ll turn out to be a bust or a diplomatic breakthrough, similar to the Paris Agreement. Here’s how it would work.

Carbon Re spins out of academia-land to take on cement pollution • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 7, 2022Posted in Carbon Re, cement, Climate, climate change, Planet A Ventures, StartupsNo Comments

Spinning out of top U.K. universities Cambridge University and UCL, Carbon Re just raised £4.2 million ($4.8 million) in a bid to tackle the gigatonnes of carbon emissions spewing forth from the traditional thorn-in-climate-change-side cement industry. The company says it is building state-of-the-art AI to decarbonize energy-intensive industries. It claims that its “Delta Zero AI” platform could potentially reduce more than 50 kilotonnes of CO2 emissions per plant. The company tells me that its SaaS solution “models the unique production environment of each plant and uses advanced machine learning and AI techniques to achieve previously out-of-reach operational efficiencies.” Delta Zero continuously analyzes manufacturing data to enable plant operators to optimize production processes on a near-live basis, although it doesn’t specifically describe what changes the algorithms suggest in order to achieve these cuts in emissions. “At a time of escalating fuel prices and increasing emphasis on CO2 reduction targets, there is an urgent need for action. Carbon Re is connecting the biggest challenge of our time – climate change – with the biggest opportunity – advances in AI,” said Sherif Elsayed-Ali, CEO of Carbon Re, in a statement to ZebethMedia. “Our platform provides a unique solution for energy-intensive industries that delivers £2 million in fuel cost savings and 50,000 tonnes of CO2 savings per plant. This latest funding round will enable us to accelerate our mission to reduce carbon emissions by gigatonnes every year.” Planet A Ventures, a Berlin-based climate tech venture capital firm, led the £4.2 million round, with participation from Clean Growth Fund, UCL Technology Fund and Cambridge Enterprise. The new investment will enable Carbon Re to focus on rolling out its product to the global cement market. The next target the company has set itself is to expand into other energy-intensive industries, such as steel and glass.

Laid off? Climate tech is looking for talent and founders • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 5, 2022Posted in Climate, climate tech, EC Food Climate and Sustainability, Layoffs, tech layoffsNo Comments

As rumors rumbled that the U.S. Federal Reserve would hike rates once more — and when it followed through earlier this week — another round of layoffs hit the tech sector. Stripe, Opendoor, Chime, Zillow, Cerebral, Brex, and of course Twitter, among others, have already cut or are about to eliminate thousands of jobs. That’s bad news for employees today, but it might be good news for the climate in the near future. Before we get too far, let me say up front that getting laid off is terrible and not something I wish to happen to anyone. Not knowing where your paychecks will come from or what benefits you’ll receive is difficult in the best of times, and it’s far worse when economic signs are mixed or major life changes are looming. I am not at all trying to minimize what people go through when they’ve been laid off. It’s happened to me, and it sucks. But layoffs also offer a chance at a new beginning. Even before the recent waves of layoffs started washing over the tech industry, people were leaving their old jobs for new opportunities in climate tech. While this is a ZebethMedia+ story, we made sure the paywall is below the key links in case you are job-hunting. Hugs — The TC+ team “One thing we’re seeing is really, really strong talent leaving larger companies,” Erin Price-Wright, a partner at Index Ventures, said at ZebethMedia Disrupt, “because some of the financial upside for public tech companies or maybe even late-stage tech companies has sort of vaporized in the last few months. And people are like, ‘Well, I had these golden handcuffs, and that was preventing me from working on what I really care about. And I don’t have that anymore. So I’m going to take a risk and I’m going to do something.’” Climate tech has been booming relative to the rest of the market, with startups in the sector raising $5.6 billion in the first half of this year, short of 2021’s crazy hauls but still well ahead of 2020, the next previous record, according to PitchBook. Five years from now, PitchBook expects the climate tech market to be worth $1.4 trillion, a compound annual growth rate of 8.8%. All those companies are in desperate need of talent. Nearly every early-stage founder in the climate tech space I’ve spoken with in recent months went out of their way to mention that they’re hiring. Job board Climatebase has hundreds of jobs listed right now, and that’s just a portion of the climate tech companies with active listings. Shaun Abrahamson, co-founder of climate-focused Third Sphere, pointed out that his firm’s portfolio companies are currently hiring for over 400 positions. Breakthrough Energy Ventures’ portfolio companies are hiring for nearly 1,200 positions. Elsewhere, around 100 companies are using the climate career platform Terra.do to directly connect with applicants, chief business officer Nishant Mani told ZebethMedia. The startup frequently runs virtual job fairs to match employees with employers, and business is booming. The platform’s user base is growing 50% month on month, and Mani is aiming to get 1,000 companies actively using the platform in the next six months.

How to land investors who fund game-changing companies • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 4, 2022Posted in Climate, climate tech, EC Food Climate and Sustainability, EC Hardware, EC TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, Sila, startup fundraising, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, VentureNo Comments

A lot of problems worth solving aren’t ones that you can solve in a year or two or even 10. For founders and investors alike, such long timelines can seem daunting. But for Gene Berdichevsky, co-founder and CEO of battery tech startup Sila, hard tech problems are also some of the most tantalizing. “It’s always a good time to be a hard tech startup,” Berdichevsky said at ZebethMedia Disrupt. “One of the reasons is that the world doesn’t change just because it should. It changes because someone goes after something insanely hard and actually succeeds at it.” Such hard.tech startups run the gamut from advanced batteries like those made by Sila to nuclear fusion, quantum computing, automation and robotics. Any tech that has the potential for such broad impact also has a massive potential market, and that means a certain class of investors are willing to be in it for the long haul. “Hire people to do the technical stuff. Keep an eye on it, but then go learn the other pieces.” Gene Berdichevsky, co-founder and CEO, Sila “We look for real step-change, game-changing technologies that are going to benefit everyone and we think that will drive a huge [total addressable market],” said Milo Werner, a general partner at The Engine. When Berdichevsky founded Sila, he believed his company’s technology, a silicon-based anode that promises to improve lithium-ion battery energy density by 20%–40%, would be a significant enough advance that it would have no problem finding a market. What he didn’t expect was how long it would take. When Sila’s first product debuted inside the Whoop 4.0 wearable last year, the path to market had been twice as long as Berdichevsky had expected.

There’s still green in climate robots • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in Actuator, AMP Robotics, Climate, Google, Hardware, labrador systems, Robotics & AINo Comments

Kicking things off with a big funding round for AMP Robotics this week for a couple of reasons, but when push comes to shove, it comes down to something really simple: There are a lot of great reasons to be bullish on automation and there are a lot of equally great reasons to be bullish on climate tech. If you can manage to position yourself right in the middle of that Venn diagram, you’re probably sitting pretty right now. There are caveats, of course. There are always caveats. A big, scary bear market is the most immediate. We’ve alluded to current and coming layoffs in recent editions of this newsletter, and the truth is that there are going to be a lot more before we’re on the other side of this. As bright as your category is long-term, no one exists outside these macro trends. I certainly wouldn’t want to be in the position of raising a round to keep the lights on at my startup as the headwinds grow stronger. The days of the nine-digit Series A seem to have mostly drawn to a close for the foreseeable future, and I’m accordingly hearing more reports of decreased headcounts. But if I had to choose a tech startup space to ride this out in, climate and automation would be at or near the top. To steal a paragraph from Connie’s recent interview with Chris Sacca: [Climate investing] is recession proof, even without the IRA. Everything we’re doing is providing a substitute good. That’s what almost feels unfair. You spend years building Twitter and you put it up in the app store and you hope somebody gives a damn. It could be a really well-designed product, but maybe no one cares, whereas everything we’re building right now, we actually know the demand for it. And if we deliver a better, cheaper, faster, cooler, easier-to-use, sexier product, then we’ll even grow the market. So I actually think this is some of the easiest investing we’ve done. From where I sit, “recession proof” seems a little hyperbolic in the near term, but climate disaster isn’t a thing of the future. We’re living with it — and have been for some time. There are going to be plenty of bandwagon jumpers and green washers in the interim, but if you’ve got good vision and better vetting, the right climate-focused technology might be as close to a sure thing as you’re going to get as an investor. Ditto for robotics and automation for reasons we’ve outlined plenty of times over the last couple of years. Find the right solution for the right problem, and you might one day be looking at your own $91 million Series C. I’m far from a technological utopianist, and my feelings on the future of climate change are a lot darker than I’m comfortable discussing here. It certainly doesn’t help to prep for all of this by reading a recent Greenpeace report that notes, “The plastics, packaging, and recycling industries have waged a decades-long misinformation campaign to perpetuate the myth that plastic is recyclable.” Image Credits: AMP Robotics It’s important to be pragmatic to a fault here. We don’t do ourselves any favors by sugarcoating the size and scope of the current crisis. Nor do we have much to gain by going full doomer. Somewhere between the two exists the possibilities of achievable solutions. None will fix the problem, but if we’re lucky, the right one could serve to mitigate things. Recycling robotics firm AMP’s latest raise follows a sizable $55 million Series B raised in January of last year. Congruent Ventures and Wellington Management led this massive $91 million round, which also features participation from Blue Earth Capital, Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners, Tao Capital Partners, XN, Sequoia Capital, GV, Range Ventures, and Valor Equity Partners. “Advancements in robotics and automation are accelerating the transformation of traditional infrastructure, and AMP is seeking to reshape the waste and recycling industries,” said Wellington’s Michael DeLucia. “By bringing digital intelligence to the recycling industry, AMP can sort waste streams and extract additional value beyond what is otherwise possible.” All of this comes with the standard caveat that there are truly no surefire bets in this — or any — industry. There are still a million difficult to quantify factors, from timing to competition to sheer luck, which play a role in a product’s success. The more companies that enter a space, the more more failure we’ll ultimately see. Though, that’s kind of the deal with early stage investment — no one gets it right 100% of the time. But a few perfectly timed investments can make a career. The upshot of facing an impossibly large, seemingly insurmountable problem (if one can say such a thing) is that there’s still a ton of problems that need the right minds to tackle them. There are a million oversaturated categories in automation right now. Filtering out all of the aforementioned greenwashing, the same can’t be said for climate. It “almost feels unfair,” to steal a line from Sacca. Frankly, it’s also a space I’d love to see more of the bigger names operate in. Take Google, for example. The company had a big AI day here in NYC this week, showcasing some of its work in the category. Google has investments in both climate and automation, and it would be great to see these sorts of companies working to solve big problems with big ideas. Gaining advantages to move e-commerce to a same-day delivery model is all well and good, but ordering all of the sunscreen on Amazon isn’t going to do you much good in the face of true climate catastrophe. Image Credits: Google Google for Good did take centerstage at the event, however, with the company demonstrating how advances to ML are being used for the very important work of monitoring wildfires and floods. It’s also worth highlighting some of the company’s efforts in robotic learning. Code as Policies (CaP) is a newly announced