While the final numbers are still being tallied, it’s clear that 2021 was a record-shattering year for climate-tech investments.

The first half of the year alone saw over $60 billion flow to climate-tech startups, per PwC, more than double the $28.4 billion invested in all of 2020. It’s now estimated that 14% of VC dollars go to climate tech.

Ryan Panchadsaram, a technical advisor to longtime climate-tech investor John Doerr at the investment firm Kleiner Perkins, has been focused on venture-stage companies developing climate tech since 2016.

• Panchadsaram is also the former deputy chief technology officer of the United States.

Last year, Doerr and Panchadsaram co-authored the book Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now, which argues that investing in climate tech is key to cutting greenhouse-gas emissions. But the increase in capital they expected to see over the next five to 10 years has now “happened overnight,” he told Emerging Tech Brew.

We spoke with Panchadsaram about what’s driving hyperactive climate-tech VC activity and what he’s watching for in the year ahead.

Here’s the full interview, which touches on everything from the near-future of climate tech to why this isn’t the cleantech 1.0 bubble all over again, and below is a brief excerpt.

On 2021

“2021 was a year of great public market successes. It was a great project-finance success in the sense of the cost of deployment of solar and wind. And because of all of this excitement and examples of what winning looks like, of course, private capital is going to flow.

The other big shift from 2021 as well is this reality check for energy companies—the oil and fossil-fuel companies—that, hey, your time is actually running out.”

On cleantech timelines

“I think the timelines in this space—when you look at Beyond Meat, you look at Tesla, and you look at even Sun Run and Enphase—you’re looking at a decade[-long] quest, and even longer.

The thing we have to go for is actually the green discount. Green stuff will not always be expensive, right? Solar and wind used to have a premium and now there’s a green discount. And all of a sudden, when there's a discount, the financial community around that stuff goes, 'I can finance that.'"

Click here to read the full interview on the near-future of climate tech.—GD

On Wednesday, Nuro debuted its newest—and eponymous—delivery robot.

Why this matters: At present, Nuro is one of the only companies to be operating fully self-driving vehicles on public roads in the US—meaning no safety driver or passenger. The delivery-only bots don’t even have drivers’ seats or steering wheels.

• In the past year, Nuro has performed testing and pilot programs in Houston, Phoenix, and Mountain View, California. The company declined to share how many deliveries it had made so far.
• In November, it announced it had raised $600 million at an $8.6 billion valuation.

The new model is automotive production-grade, meaning it’s designed to take on the same potential road obstacles as any other vehicle, with twice the cargo capacity as previous iterations. “Nuro” can drive on public roads for vehicles up to 45 mph, while previous models were restricted to 25 mph and lower.

• And, in a proactive push for pedestrian safety, the bot has an external airbag.

Some no-background: Nuro hails from Mountain View, and is the brainchild of two Google alums who worked on the company’s self-driving car project (now Waymo).

And since its founding in 2016, Nuro has also made major regulatory progress in the AV space. Last February, it snagged the federal government’s first-ever driverless car exemption from federal safety requirements, allowing it to operate delivery-only driverless vehicles that lack safety tools human drivers need (e.g., windshield, mirrors, etc.).

• In December, it secured California’s first autonomous vehicle deployment permit, allowing Nuro to charge customers and receive payment for driverless delivery.

Looking ahead: Nuro plans to build the new bots at its under-construction factory in Nevada, which it says will be completed later this year, and pre-production is already underway.

Click here to view this story on-site.—HF

A year ago, the semiconductor shortage officially became a concern, as a rapid succession of automakers slashed production targets. Since then, the chip crunch has messed with products from washing machines to the Nintendo Switch—and we’re still in the midst of it now.

Industry experts largely expect the shortage to last through this year, although it may begin easing in the second half of 2022, according to some. Let’s take a look at some recent news on the chipmaking front:

• Wait times: Have continued climbing to record highs. It now takes nearly 26 weeks for an order to be fulfilled, per Susquehanna Financial Group research cited by Bloomberg. Pre-pandemic, wait times hovered between ~12 and 15 weeks.
• Record-high demand: Bad news for buyers has translated to good news for major chip-makers. TSMC just reported its sixth-straight quarter of record sales (it made $15.8 billion), and Samsung is forecasting a 52% jump in profit. And after hitting a record high last year, IC Insights expects overall chip sales to break records again this year, rising 11% to $680.6 billion in total sales.
• Nesting shortages: In a matryoshka-like turn of events, there aren’t enough chips, nor are there enough machines that make the not-enough chips, nor are there enough workers to operate the machines that make the not-enough chips.

Looking ahead…TSMC says it will spend at least $40 billion this year to expand its production capacity—a, you guessed it, record-high figure.

Click here to view this story on-site.—DM

Stat: In 2021, electric vehicles accounted for more than 15% of new vehicle sales in China, the world’s biggest automobile market. Bonus stat: EVs accounted for over one-fifth of China’s new auto sales in November and December.

Quote: “I think that there is a real genuine, existential risk associated with how that gets done.”—Second Life founder Philip Rosedale, on tech giants creating the metaverse. After 11 years, he’s returned to working on Second Life, a pioneer of digital worlds.

Read: Inside the Discord community where marketers try to figure out what Web3 is. 

Essential info: KPIs help organizations measure progress, but which are the most important when it comes to tracking success? In Oracle NetSuite’s guide, you’ll learn about the 20 essential KPIs every growing business should track, and much more. Get the guide here.*

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

• Cats have interrupted at least one Starlink user’s satellite broadband connection.
• Tito’s Vodka has invested more money into an open-source Covid-19 vaccine than the US government has.
• Analysts say it’s “inevitable” that virtual real estate will surpass physical real estate in total market value.
• Samsung just…didn’t show up to a major keynote it had planned.

Earlier this week, a federal judge ruled that the FTC’s antitrust suit against Meta can move forward. While it’s a significant milestone, Casey Newton, a journalist who covers tech platforms, argues that this antitrust suit against Meta is not the one to watch.

Instead…He thinks the scrutiny of Meta’s ongoing mixed-reality acquisitions—like the FTC’s probe of Meta’s acquisition of VR developer Within—is more important, for a few reasons:

• Regulators took too long to bring suits against Facebook from a social-networking POV, and now 1) the world has moved on, he argues and 2) TikTok is a legit competitor.
• Meta’s mixed-reality efforts are still in-progress, meaning regulators could proactively challenge acquisitions rather than attempting to unwind approved purchases years later.

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

• A year after rolling out, GM’s B2B electric vehicle arm has signed major partners
• How a 21-year-old AI company just became a unicorn
• John Deere thinks its self-driving tractor can help feed the world