Ground transportation is marching decisively toward an electric future.

But what about the skies?

Electric propulsion technologies are beginning to take flight as well—a step toward reducing climate-warming emissions from an industry that is responsible for nearly 3% of total greenhouse-gas emissions in the US.

Vermont-based electric aerospace startup Beta Technologies is betting big on the idea that electric aircraft could not only help address the climate crisis, but also transform air travel as we know it.

Beta is developing batteries, electric motors, charging infrastructure, and electric aircraft itself. It’s in the process of obtaining certification from the Federal Aviation Administration for its zero-emission, battery-powered aircraft (dubbed Alia).

Alia has both electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) and electric conventional take-off and landing (eCTOL) variants. The aircraft has logged tens of thousands of miles on test flights, including a trip totaling more than 2,000 nautical miles from New York to Arkansas and back.

Beta is building out charging infrastructure to serve the entire sector, with dozens of charging sites already in operation or in the works. It has agreements with three major fixed-base operators: Atlantic, Signature, and AvFlight, according to the company.

Following a Series B funding round in 2022, Beta’s total funding came to around $800 million. And, according to Beta, it has signed up UPS, Air New Zealand, and United Therapeutics as customers.

It’s just one of many companies working to electrify aviation, including ventures focused on trying to crack the more difficult proposition of passenger flights. Short-haul flights, at least for now, are widely considered to be the most realistic scenario because of current limitations with battery technology.

Tech Brew recently caught up with Blain Newton, Beta’s COO, about the startup’s ambitions to decarbonize aviation and democratize electric air travel.

Keep reading here.—JG

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Q1 was a solid period for sales of electrified vehicles—but not for the EV market’s leader.

Despite recently reclaiming its crown as the world’s biggest EV seller from Chinese automaker BYD, Tesla’s quarterly deliveries were an “unmitigated disaster,” Wedbush Securities said in a report.

He wasn’t alone in his disappointment: Tesla shares dropped Tuesday on the automaker’s report that it delivered 386,810 vehicles in Q1, coming in below analysts’ expectations and falling 8.5% from a year ago.

Analysts at Cox Automotive predicted Tesla’s lackluster growth during a Q1 forecast call. Stephanie Valdez Streaty, director of industry insights, said that while the EV sector was on track for 15% YoY growth in Q1, that number jumped to 33% when Tesla was taken out of the mix.

“Looking at the data, the EV slowdown is shaping up to be a Tesla slowdown,” she said.

Keep reading here.—JG

It’s been a tough time for startups, and things didn’t show signs of improvement in the first quarter.

The quarterly aggregate value of deals between venture capitalists and startups dropped to its lowest level since 2017, PitchBook data showed this week. VC funds also struggled to raise money from investors; venture capitalists collected just $9.3 billion in capital last quarter, only 11.3% of the total amount they raised in 2023, which was already a sluggish year.

Outside of some eye-popping AI investment, the startup market has been struggling since federal interest rate hikes beginning in 2022 made riskier venture capital bets less appealing. PitchBook’s lead US VC analyst, Kyle Stanford, said in the report that “sticky inflation” and the possibility of a recession mean this isn’t likely to change soon.

In terms of positives, Stanford noted that startup valuations saw a slight bump across all stages of growth, which he attributed to “relatively strong performance from public markets and slight multiple expansion.”

Investors also continue to be excited about AI, which Stanford said accounted for many of the new funding rounds this quarter.

“A lot of investors see it as this new technology revolution, whether it be getting companies more efficient or opening up new applications for entrepreneurs to develop using AI,” Stanford told Tech Brew.

Keep reading here.—PK

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

Forever searching: Are you tired of scrolling past a stack of ads before you finally get to what you were *actually* looking for on the internet? Yeah, us too! And boy, oh boy, do we have good news for you today. Jason Koebler over at 404 Media broke up with Google and switched to Kagi, an ad-free search engine that sets you back $10 a month for the privilege of not having to deal with what you weren’t looking for in the first place. We gleefully jumped on that bandwagon and are pleased to confirm Koebler’s reporting: Kagi just…works. We’re happily swapping one latte per month in exchange for a wild improvement in the quality of our search lives.

Homeownership. There’s an app for that: Speaking of improving the quality of our lives, Wired has notes on an app that could help make homeownership less onerous. Thumbtack is like “the Yellow Pages and Uber mixed into one app,” with an “enormous” database of hundreds of thousands of home-help pros from across the US. Anything that has the potential to make homeownership easier, less expensive, and less time-consuming sounds like a worthy download to us.