Beyond Climate Tech

I'm expanding my investment focus from climate tech to accelerating prosperity

It’s been almost five years since I wrote The Breeze - Issue #1. Since then, I consulted for Congruent Ventures, raised Jetstream Fund I, and invested $10M+ into 40+ climate tech startups. I left San Francisco, came back, had two kids, and turned forty. It’s been fun.

Climate tech is now mainstream. The phrase “climate tech” evolved from differentiating the 2019ish-onward wave of climate and clean energy startups from the earlier Cleantech 1.0 batch to a category that represents a global ecosystem of founders, investors, corporations, conferences, coworking spaces, and non-profits. The market forces we sought arrived.

Meanwhile AI has made quick progress. We’ve moved from LLMs to apps and robots. AI accelerated climate tech startups in weather forecasting, wildfire detection, energy efficiency, grid response, route optimization, robot manipulation, and protein discovery to name a few areas.

AI has supercharged other industries too. Legal, accounting, bookkeeping, and tax services are being fueled by or replaced by AI apps. In education, two-year-olds are learning to read, and five-year-olds are speed-running 5th grade math. The SaaS stalwarts of productivity, fintech, marketing, and e-comm are undergoing massive shifts. Not to mention how AI makes robots highly intelligent, and sometimes scary too. AI will permeate every tech sector.

Trump won in November, which kicked off the era of VC in DC. The White House will have the most tech-friendly administration ever, with positions held by VCs and founders Peter Thiel (Founders Fund), JD Vance (Mithril Capital), Elon Musk, David Sacks (Craft Ventures), Sriram Krishnan (a16z), Scott Kupor (a16z), and Emil Michael (Uber). Marc Andreessen, the “unpaid intern” of DOGE, is currently on a podcast tour repeating the Reagan tagline, “It’s morning again in America.” Rise and shine, it’s the dawn of a new Golden Age for startups.

With climate tech moving from niche to mainstream, AI creating the conditions for reimagining industries, and the advent of a Golden Age for startups, I’ve been drawn to explore how AI can accelerate prosperity for the 8B people on our planet.

I’m expanding my climate tech focus to include additional categories that will make our lives significantly better. When I think about prosperity, I think of three buckets: Health, Wealth, and Resilience.

1. Health - longevity, community, leisure

2. Wealth - fintech, education, productivity

3. Resilience - energy, infrastructure, intelligence

Here’s my take on each sub-category.

• Longevity - people will seek more agency over their fitness, diet, and sleep, with measurement and feedback loops becoming more accessible and cheap.

• Community - humans thrive in community. I’ve enjoyed living, working, and working out with friends, and invested in Amara and LiveNearFriends. In an AI world, there’s a swing toward in-person experiences.

• Leisure - downtime and play have all sorts of benefits. AI might free up more people’s time and help us pursue our curiosities and creativity in new ways.

• Fintech - a lot will change here, from AI for personal finances to agents paying each other with crypto. I’m excited to lean back into the space as a previous investor in Robinhood, Mercury, and AtoB.

• Education - AI delivering measurable outcomes based on an individuals’ capabilities will have a seismic impact, per Tim Urban. I’m following Mentava, Synthesis, Recess, and Math Academy, and invested in Primer. Decentralized schooling, the evolution of homeschooling, will continue its rise.

• Productivity - labor-saving and capital-saving gains with AI will replace lots of services and manual labor. I’m looking for niches.

• Energy - we’ll use a lot more and need a lot more. Nuclear and space-based solar power are emerging, and solar + batteries march onward toward ubiquity.

• Infrastructure - AI will meet the real world with autonomy, precision, and repeatability, like Jetstream-backed Gritt AI.

• Intelligence - we’ll understand space, the atmosphere, Earth, and oceans better than ever before with data, analysis, forecasts, and action thanks to low-cost sensors, drones, and hardware. I work with Albedo, Windborne, Planette, and Rhizome in this space.

One of the joys of publishing The Breeze over the past few years has been the conversations it kicks off with friends and strangers. What opportunities do you see for prosperity-maxxing humanity? What’s exciting to you at the frontier?

Stay breezy,

Tommy