Intercalation Station is where all the cool battery kids hang out.

The newsletter, co-founded by battery scientists Nicholas Yiu and Andrew Wang, goes deep on the research and business developments in the battery and energy storage spaces. Over the last three years, it has grown to ~4,000 readers—members of the industry, academics, investors—and has become a community constantly discussing and comparing notes on the future of this foundational tech.

Now, Yiu and Wang are looking to tap into that expert audience to help fund promising battery startups. The pair announced their angel investment network, Intercalation Collective, in mid-December.

• Innovation in batteries, as in many essential areas of climate tech, requires extensive scientific knowledge.
• Yiu wrote that this network will “share companies we believe are game-changers” in the space and aims to “remove barriers to angel investing” for individuals who want to back those companies by accepting investments as small as £1,000 (~$1,200).

But beyond helping to fund battery startups in their earliest stages, the group could serve another function, according to the VCs we spoke with: It could help less-specialized but deeper-pocketed VC firms build their knowledge of the complex battery landscape.

In fact...Some larger climate-tech investors like Voyager, which raised a $100 million fund for early-stage startups focused on decarbonization last April, have turned to the Intercalation community as an resource on batteries, Sarah Sclarsic, co-founder and managing partner at investment firm Voyager, told us. Keep reading about the battery experts here.—GD

Last year, the satellite-to-phone market saw a number of new projects, but perhaps none splashier than Apple’s $450 million linkup with Globalstar.

Now, some Android phones are set to join the satellite connectivity party.

Last week, Qualcomm announced a partnership with satellite communications company Iridium Communications to provide a satellite-based messaging service to certain smartphones running  the Android operating systems.

• Qualcomm’s new service, called Snapdragon Satellite, will be available in select markets in the second half of 2023 on devices with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 mobile platform and will enable two-way communication between devices.
• The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 will be on phones from at least 17 manufacturers.

Big picture: The move is the latest in a string of recent announcements from companies looking to move into the suddenly hot satellite direct-to-device industry, which space industry research firm Northern Sky Research recently described as the “largest opportunity in Satcom’s history.”

It projects that satellite direct-to-device subscribers could grow from basically zero in 2022 to nearly 400 million monthly users by 2030.

Read the full story here.—JM

Usually, we write about the business of tech. Here, we highlight the *tech* of tech.

A topical stove innovation: By now you’ve probably heard about the Consumer Product Safety Commission's fact-based-but-immediately-politicized potential proposal to ban the sale of new gas stoves in the US. A common objection to such bans is that, in the event of a power outage, gas stoves still work. One startup could offer a solution to that problem: In the fall, Impulse announced plans to build induction stoves with battery storage.

Xbox goes green (in more than color scheme): Microsoft is testing out a new energy-saving feature that shuts down the gaming console during either automatically predicted or manually scheduled hours. The company claims the features would save more energy than sleep mode, in which the system goes dormant but still chugs along in the background.

Let’s end on a more general note: One of the biggest consumer tech stories of last year was the long-awaited arrival of the Matter smart-home standard. So it’s no surprise that Matter product announcements abounded at CES, and The Verge has a nice roundup of them.—DM

Stat: When Virgin Orbit’s first attempt to launch a satellite failed earlier this week, the company’s share price plummeted by 14%.

Quote: “There is a lot more optimism in the clean energy and whole cleantech transition that we’re seeing, compared to other parts of the economy,” Ryan Panchadsaram, technical advisor to John Doerr at Kleiner Perkins, to Emerging Tech Brew

Read: The US is going to need a lot more electricians.

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

• Security researchers found that ChatGPT is already being used by cybercriminals to spread malware.
• Starting next week, the character limit for tweets could reportedly be 4,000 characters…aka ~16x higher than it is now.
• L’Oréal announced a new at-home eyebrow-printing machine at CES.
• Microsoft reportedly plans to introduce a ChatGPT-powered version of Clippy as part of its rumored investment in OpenAI.

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

• The year ahead for climate-tech investment
• ASML’s CFO predicts growth despite rocky chip market
• GM’s vision for computerized cars