After a record-breaking 2021, venture investment in the space industry is falling back to earth faster than a defunct satellite.

On both a quarterly and yearly basis, investment dollars dropped for space startups in Q2. Investment in space startups fell by 38% year over year, from $9.9 billion in Q2 2021 to $6.1 billion in Q2 2022, while the deal count dropped by 33%, from 141 to 93, according to Space Capital, an early-stage venture-capital firm. And between Q1 2022 and Q2 2022, investment fell by 18%, from $7.2 billion to $6.1 billion.

Zoom in: Space infrastructure companies raised $2.5 billion in Q2 2022, compared to the record-high $4.5 billion invested one year earlier.

• SpaceX drove much of the funding last quarter with a $1.7 billion funding round in May 2022.

Zoom out: That’s a faster yearly decline than overall venture investment, which dropped 27% YoY from last year’s record-highs but smaller than the 26% pullback overall venture funding saw on a quarterly basis.

Read the full piece here, with analysis from space-industry experts.—JM

Wednesday was a legislative twofer: There was movement on two previously stalled pieces of US legislation that, if signed into law, would have a deep and wide-ranging impact on emerging tech in the US.

The CHIPS+ Act, with $52 billion in semiconductor subsidies and $228 billion more for other science and tech projects, passed both the House and Senate. Biden, who has long pleaded with Congress to make this happen, will certainly give it his John Hancock.

• While the funding for, you know, chips, is the headline figure, most of the money will go to unrelated R&D deemed important to national security.
• The bill frequently name-checks fields like AI, quantum, connectivity, precision ag, and energy.

Build Back Be—ahem, sorry—the Inflation Reduction Act, dropped late in the evening, a surprise climate and tax deal announced by Senator Joe Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. The legislation was salvaged from the wreckage of the Build Back Better negotiations, and includes a record-breaking $369 billion in climate spending. The plan is for it to go to a vote next week.

• Among many other things, the bill would extend the $7,500 federal EV tax credit and also provide $30 billion in tax credits for domestic production of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, and critical materials.
• It’d also allocate $27 billion to build a cleantech accelerator to help develop and deploy emissions-reducing technologies.

Read on-site.—DM

Just like any other role in most city governments, chief innovation officers take their cues from the mayor.

Few understand that better than Santiago Garces, who became CIO of Boston in May 2022, after serving stints as CIO in both Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and South Bend, Indiana.

• Garces created South Bend’s Department of Innovation and Technology during his tenure from 2014 to 2018, before becoming CIO of Pittsburgh from 2018 to 2020.
• Now, he’s working with Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, who assumed office in November 2021.

Garces and Wu have mapped out an extensive digital equity plan centered around expanding broadband access, improving transportation access, building telehealth infrastructure, and expanding public wi-fi coverage.

We talked to Garces about the relationship between innovation chiefs and mayors, and how he has navigated the responsibilities of the role and the priorities of the mayors in his career.

Check out the interview with Garces here.—JM

Stat: GM’s Cruise, the only company other than Waymo that operates a fully driverless robotaxi network in the US, has lost nearly $5 billion since 2018.

Quote: “We’re sort of in this pretty intense period for the next 18, 24 months. It’s possible it’s even a little bit longer.”—Mark Zuckerberg to his employees, during a recent all-hands

Read: Here’s a very 21st-century phenomenon: algorithmic anxiety.

Three of the following news stories are true, and one...we made up. Can you spot the odd one out?

• TikTok is creating a DALL-E-esque AI system that generates short videos based on prompts.
• A Russian chess robot broke its seven-year-old competitor’s finger during a tournament.
• Ukrainians are repurposing e-cig batteries to power drones.
• Some climate activists, fed up with a lack of policy progress, are protesting by deflating SUV tires.

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

• From infant poop to trance music, here’s a play-by-play of a CRISPR experiment
• Here’s how the climate tech funding environment is shifting amid a broader VC pullback
• Montreal-based dcbel is one startup helping homeowners use EVs as backup power