Get ready for a new watercooler topic: Venture investment may be trending down, but funding for AI is performing even worse.

Total VC deal count worldwide has maintained momentum from last year’s record highs, but so far in 2022, “deal value has declined rather significantly across all stages,” according to a PitchBook report—and AI funding in particular is falling faster than the market.

Zoom in: In Q2 2022, global AI funding plummeted by more than 44% year over year, from $33.6 billion to $18.8 billion, per Pitchbook data shared with Emerging Tech Brew.

• Over the same period, overall global VC funding fell by 25%, from $176 billion to $131.7 billion.
• On a quarterly basis, global VC funding for AI and machine learning was down more than 26% between Q2 and Q1, a slightly larger margin than the 20% drop for global VC as a whole.

“The market downturn has coincided with AI platform companies, including some of the largest ones, missing their revenue expectations, and demonstrating that AI across enterprise isn’t producing high growth yet,” Brendan Burke, senior analyst for emerging technology at Pitchbook, told us. “That’s forcing a reevaluation of some of those business models.”

Read the full story on the state of AI funding.—HF

The electrification of everything is copper’s time to shine, but soon the metal could become harder to find.

Copper is a standout electrical conductor—only silver allows electricity to flow more easily. While it is commonly used today in electrical wiring, renewable energy sources and EVs will require much more copper than their fossil-fuel-powered predecessors.

• By the numbers: Global demand for the metal could nearly double by 2035, from ~25 million metric tons to ~50 million MT, according to a July report from S&P Global.

“If we are to meet energy-transition targets, the amount of copper that’s going to be used over the next 28 years is going to exceed all of the cumulative copper consumption that the world has seen since 1900,” John Mothersole, director of nonferrous metals economics and country risk for S&P Market Intelligence, said in a discussion about the report.

Looking ahead...The growth in demand for copper isn’t expected to be quite as drastic as the scramble for other critical minerals such as lithium, but it’s still expected to pose challenges for the energy transition.

Read the full story here.—GD

Stat: Despite mounting technological competition and geopolitical strife between the countries, the US approved 88% of applications for tech exports to China in 2021 and 94% in 2020.

Quote: “The fact we can change some of the things that the customer wants remotely is a really powerful thing and a first to market.”—Simon Pollard, founder of Covvi, which has developed a bionic hand that can be updated remotely

Read: This startup beat every brain-computer interface company—including Neuralink—to a key milestone.

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

• Verizon announced it would shutter most of its 5G projects and double down on…3G.
• The startup that is “de-extincting” woolly mammoths is now also looking to bring back an extinct tiger.
• Even Amazon is rolling out a TikTok clone now.
• Airbnb has introduced “anti-party technology” in an attempt to block would-be party-throwers from booking reservations.

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

• Hyundai’s self-steering ship subsidiary says it has made hundreds of sales
• Aquantis is trying to draw currents from currents with subsea turbines
• Jake Paul’s VC fund is backing a startup building attack drones and the virtual border wall