This year, Apple took the aspirational wisdom of shooting for the moon and landing among the stars a bit more seriously than the average firm.

The new feature is called Emergency SOS via satellite, and it was unveiled as a headline feature of Apple’s new iPhone 14 during the company’s “Far Out” event earlier this month. Apple plans to offer the service for free for at least two years, and it will initially only be available in the US  and Canada.

By the numbers: Apple is putting $450 million from its advanced manufacturing fund toward building out the infrastructure for the project, most of which is going to its partner, satellite operator Globalstar.

• The tech giant has agreed to pay for 95% of the costs required to spin up the new satellites it needs, with Globalstar raising debt to fund the rest.
• In exchange, it’s stipulated that Apple gets exclusive access to 85% of Globalstar’s current and future network capacity to support its satellite features.

Jeff Fieldhack, research director at Counterpoint Research, told Emerging Tech Brew that one potential reason Apple is shelling out such a huge sum for the partnership is that its end goal could be eventually monetizing stronger connections in cellular dead zones like air travel, some rural areas, and other places where service is currently weak or nonexistent.

“Any dead zone you have could switch to a satellite,” Fieldhack said. “I think that’s years down the way, but it will happen eventually.”

Keep reading about Apple’s jump into the connectivity space race.—JM

Agtech and food tech have sprouted up as pillars of modern tech, and investors are showering novel companies in both sectors with billions of dollars in funding.

S2G Ventures, a Chicago-based venture capital firm, is one of the most prominent investors in the space.

• Between 2009 and 2021, the firm was the single most active investor in the agtech industry, dominating the pack with 55 deals in that timeframe.
• And for food tech, it was the second most active investor in 2022, completing 14 deals, according to Pitchbook. It manages a ~$1 billion fund focused on agtech and food tech, and sports a portfolio of over 80 companies in the industries, according to its managing director and COO Aaron Rudberg.

In total, the eight-year-old Lukas Walton-funded (yes, of the Walton family) firm manages nearly $2 billion in capital, Rudberg said, spread across energy, oceans and seafood, food and agriculture; and real assets infrastructure. There’s about $100 million in the oceans and seafood fund, he added, and $300 million in the climate and energy fund.

Zoom in: We caught up with Rudberg to learn how the leading agtech and food tech VC firm decides how and where to place its bets. Read about S2G’s investment framework here.—JM

Stat: Samsung grew its smartwatch shipments from 1.8 million in Q2 2021 to 2.8 million in Q2 2022, up 58%, per Canalys. It’s now the second-largest smartwatch maker with ~9% market share—still far behind Apple’s ~26% share.

Quote: “What’s interesting about the CISO function is they’re getting tens of thousands of bad actors or threats every single day. And they need to be right every single time, whereas a bad actor only needs to be right once for something bad to happen within the company.”—Scott Thompson, a partner at Heidrick & Struggle, to IT Brew about the stressful but in-demand role of chief information security officer

Read: A video and photos of Meta’s new Meta Quest Pro VR headset leaked in advance of its October announcement.

Learn: Innovation is the word, but a strong foundation is the secret. Before you change the tech world, level up by learning how to communicate, operate, and innovate with the Brew’s 8-week Business Essentials Accelerator.

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

• A urologist said he performed the world’s first Rivian-powered vasectomy after power went out in his office.
• A team of Dutch students created an EV that captures more CO2 than it emits.
• In spite of it all, Softbank is thinking about spinning up a third Vision Fund.
• A software startup is being sued by its investors for not SPACing during the 2021 bull market.

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

• Tomorrow’s top trends in cybersecurity, according to VCs
• Checking in on SpaceX’s first acquisition, one year later
• Clean hydrogen has a leak problem