With the white-hot investment activity of 2021 beginning to cool off, the fundraising environment now looks a little different for the startups working to cool the planet.

By the numbers: While climate-tech startups raised more in the first six months of this year than they did in the first half of 2021, funding has slowed down in comparison to the record-breaking second half of last year.

• The sector saw $18.6 billion invested across ~500 VC deals in the first half of this year, which is up 16% from H1 2021 but down 21% from H2 2021, according to analysis from Climate Tech VC (CTVC).
• Compared to H1 2021, overall venture funding for the first half of 2022 fell 11%, from $317 billion to $282 billion, and it fell 21% compared to the last six months of 2021, per Crunchbase.

Although climate-tech funding may not reach last year’s high of nearly $40 billion, CTVC expects deal activity to increase—and VCs are sitting on a lot of dry powder.

In other words: While 2021 was “undeniably the peak” for climate-tech funding, “that doesn’t mean we’re just going to fall off a cliff,” Kim Zou, co-founder of CTVC, told us.

Even so, VCs and analysts told us there are shifts happening in the market. Here’s our update on the shifting landscape for climate-tech funding.—GD

In April, OpenAI—the AI company co-founded in part by Elon Musk, Y Combinator’s Sam Altman, and Stripe’s Greg Brockman—debuted DALL-E 2, a powerful machine learning system capable of generating high-resolution images from a user’s text prompt.

In June, a savvy developer created a miniature version of the model, giving any internet memer the power to generate images—which kicked off a flurry of viral creations, from Pikachu as a pug to an astronaut astride a unicorn. Other outputs resembled high-brow art, and the system even created the first AI-generated magazine cover. But the full-fledged system was only available to a chosen few—i.e., a group of vetted individuals.

That all changed last Wednesday: OpenAI announced it would open up the DALL-E system to 1 million members of the public via a wait-list.

• Users who get that one-of-a-million chance will receive 50 free image credits to start, and 15 credits each month after that.
• One credit buys three to four images, depending on the prompt, and it’s possible to purchase an additional 115-credit package for $15.

Another update: Starting this week, OpenAI is offering full commercial-usage rights for DALL-E-generated images (think: reprint, sell, or use for merch). According to the company, users’ plans include children’s book illustrations, newsletter art, film storyboards, and even video-game characters.

Zoom out: OpenAI said it’s still worried about safety and the system’s potential harms, from propagating bias to generating misinformation. To help address the risks, the company announced it has put safeguards in place to reject image uploads of realistic faces, block violent or adult images, and encourage diverse outputs in response to prompts (like “CEO”).

+ While we’re here: Just how worried should graphic designers be about DALL-E stealing their jobs?—HF

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in tech?
We are trying to develop software and platforms aimed at making the logistics process with a freight forwarder as seamless and efficient as possible.

What’s your favorite emerging tech project you’ve worked on?

IoT: I have been able to create [an] amazing user experience in smart homes for myself and others. Automating daily tasks is one of the best ways to get back time and focus on what really matters.

What emerging tech are you most optimistic about? Least? And why?

Autonomous driving. The most expensive parts of logistics right now are final-mile and trucking. Once autonomous vehicles can take over, freight can be moved 24 hours a day at extremely low cost.

What’s the best piece of tech-related media you’ve read/watched/listened to?

My favorite podcast is Pivot from Vox. I love the way they explore business and media, including the tech sector as a cornerstone of their content.

One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile?

I am a sports nut, especially soccer. I even played at the semi-pro level in Germany before college. I also love to cook, and as a foodie, it’s a passion of mine to play around with different versions of famous foods.

Stat: According to a survey from security firm Barracuda, 94% of 800 senior IT, security, and project managers responsible for safeguarding industrial IoT or operational technology have faced at least one security incident within the last 12 months. You can thank IT Brew for this stat that makes you go .

Quote: “I do believe that recycling will become cheaper than landfilling.”—Suvi Sharma, CEO and co-founder of Solarcycle, a solar-panel recycling startup. Right now, it’s somewhere between 10x and 30x more expensive to recycle.

Read: Your summer beach reads could soon be written by GPT-3.

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

• Montreal-based dcbel is one startup helping homeowners use EVs as backup power
• How synthetic biology startups plan to revolutionize fertilizer production
• How three startups working with large language models are thinking about ethics