Stems, leaves, trunks, roots, flowers, and fruits are the original carbon-removal tech.

Plants pull CO2 out of the atmosphere through photosynthesis, converting it to carbohydrates that allow them to grow. When plants die and decompose, carbon is released.

Turning that biomass into a more stable form of carbon can interrupt this cycle, removing CO2 from the atmosphere and storing it for hundreds or even thousands of years.

Biochar is created by taking biomass—such as organic materials like trees or other plants—and heating it up in a low-oxygen environment. This process is called pyrolysis, or gasification, and produces a very stable form of high-carbon charcoal as well as bio-gas and vapor.

Biochar for CDR

While biochar has long been used in agriculture, startups are now working to deploy it as a carbon-removal method.

Climate Robotics uses robots and AI to automate and accelerate the process. And Finnish startup Carbo Culture has raised more than $7 million to scale its “ultra-rapid conversion” method that turns waste wood from forests and farming into stable biochar.

• Charm Industrial is also focused on carbon removal through biomass. The company uses agricultural waste and a gasification process that produces both biochar, which is returned to crop fields, and bio-oils, which are stored underground.

Looking ahead: Biochar has relatively high permanence coupled with lower costs than tech like direct air capture and as a result, it’s gaining traction with organizations looking to buy carbon removal credits.

Shopify, Stripe, and Microsoft are among the 40 companies that have purchased carbon removal credits from Charm so far, which cost ~$600 per tonne of CO2. Microsoft also plans to buy 1,000 tonnes of CO2 removal from Climate Robotics this year.

Click here to read the full story.—GD

Despite growing concerns about a potential recession, agtech startups still raised a near-record amount of VC money in the first three months of this year, per a new report from Pitchbook.

Founding farmers

In Q1 2022, VCs worldwide invested $3.3 billion in agtech firms across 222 deals—that’s more than double the $1.5 billion invested in the sector in Q1 2021 and just 9% less than the Q3 2021 record of $3.7 billion.

• In comparison, overall VC funding grew by just 3% over that timeframe, per Crunchbase figures.

“I think it’s important to caveat that, in Q1, we saw most of the volatility begin mid-quarter,” Alex Frederick, senior analyst of emerging technology at Pitchbook and one of the authors of the report, told us. “At that time, I think most of the deals were already locked in place.”

Frederick said crises like the war in Ukraine, which has sent the price of nitrogen fertilizer and many other foods surging, will create some opportunities for agtech startups to innovate.

Companies like Kula Bio and Pivot Bio, for example, are working on novel ways to reduce reliance on or conserve usage of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. Kula Bio, which makes synthetic nitrogen fertilizer substitutes, raised a $50 million Series A funding in January. For its part, Pivot raised a $430 million Series D in July 2021. Pitchbook’s report argues that its environmentally-friendly product could appeal to farmers, albeit at the cost of less precision.

Big picture: The majority of agtech funding in Q1 went to the agrifinance and e-commerce industry, which raised ~$922 million across 36 deals, as small legacy farm outfits looked to find ways to better monetize their crops.

Read more about the pulse surrounding agtech funding here.—JM

You know how it goes for us: New month, new theme. This month, we’re digging into all things biotech (*ahem*, please refer back to the top story of today’s newsletter for the first piece). But let us not forget the past.

To wit…Last month, we covered the future of AI safety:

As quantum computing advances, here’s how some are thinking about ethics. The early-stage field is beginning to build momentum, and some experts are exploring a familiar balancing act in tech ethics: How can we ensure responsible development of the field without stifling innovation?

How Microsoft and Google use AI red teams to “stress test” their systems. “Red teams” are relatively new to AI. The term can be traced back to 1960s military simulations used by the Department of Defense and is now largely used in cybersecurity, where internal IT teams are tasked with thinking like adversaries to uncover systems vulnerabilities. But since 2019, Big Tech companies like Microsoft, Meta, and Google have implemented versions of AI red teams to reveal shortcomings, bias, and security flaws in their machine-learning systems.

One year after promising to double its AI ethics team, Google is light on details. Last May, Google announced plans to double its AI ethics research department to 200 people and increase its funding over the coming years. One year later, some former team members told us they’ve seen little progress.

Microsoft’s CTO thinks AI should be regulated. Kevin Scott, Microsoft’s chief technology officer, has spent more than two decades in the tech industry—including stints at Google and LinkedIn. We spoke with him about Microsoft’s approach to responsible AI.

Here is everything we wrote on AI safety last month in one place.—DM

We asked Morning Brew readers for their take on salary transparency last week and there were some really eye-opening answers. We found the more money you make the less interested you are in salary transparency. Plus some interesting differences between genders and feelings on salary transparency.

Check out the rest of your fellow readers' feelings on salary transparency here.

Stat: Meta is reportedly slashing the number of engineers it planned to hire in 2022 by 30%, as fears of a recession mount.

Quote: “We have proven the technology works….What we have to show now is strong financials as a company and that we can manage growth.” —John Hart, a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, to the New York Times on 3D printing

Read: How soccer jersey sponsorships can chart the rise and fall of tech companies.

Guess what time it is: Time for Amplify by Workiva. The conference is back to help you go all in on the bold future of transparency. Come for the ESG insights, stay for the CPE credits. Register here.*

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• SpaceX won FCC approval to provide its Starlink satellite internet service to planes, boats, and trucks in motion.
• InFarm opened a 10,000 sqm indoor growing operation in Bedford, UK, making it one of the largest indoor farms in Europe.
• Google will begin auto-deleting user location data from abortion clinics, domestic violence shelters, and other sensitive areas.
• Geely—the Chinese automaker behind Volvo, Lotus, and Polestar—is expanding into consumer devices after acquiring a majority stake of a smartphone-maker.

Snap poll: Have you eaten food grown in an indoor farm?

Yes

No

I'm not sure

Last week, we asked all of you if you’d ever tried one of those fancy AI-based coding tools, like GitHub’s Copilot or Amazon’s CodeWhisperer.

Survey says…Of our nearly 1,800 respondents, 15% have tried one of the tools before, while 45% haven’t. The remaining ~40% of you said you don’t code so, uh, N/A.

Zooming out, GitHub says 1.2 million developers have signed up for the technical preview of its Copilot tool in the last 12 months, and that when devs enable the tool, Copilot writes almost 40% of the code. Amazon’s CodeWhisperer is new—just released in June—and will be available via AWS.

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions:

• A speedrun through the last six months of emerging tech
• ‘The cloud is not a cloud’: The carbon footprint of digital technologies is vast
• At one indoor farming startup, the sun is imitated and embraced