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On Demand: All the SOSV Climate Tech Summit 2023 main stage sessions
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Ned Desmond
Ned Desmond
September 27, 2023

We just wrapped the SOSV Climate Tech Summit!

We recognize that not everyone could stay in place for 12 hours of panels and firesides over two days, so we worked over time to make each of the main stage sessions available on YouTube. Coordinates below!

Here’s the complete playlist for Day One (Sept. 26) and Day Two (Sept. 27)

And here are the individual sessions for each day:

Day One: Sept. 26, 2023

Still exuberant? The Outlook for Climate Tech Venture Investing 

Climate Tech investing dipped 40% in the first half. Where will it go from here?

  • Gabriel Kra, Managing Director, Prelude Ventures
  • Rachel Slaybaugh, Partner , DCVC
  • Christina Karapataki, Partner , Breakthrough Energy Ventures
  • Jonathan Shieber, Founder, Investor & Journalist

The IRA One Year In, With Jesse Jenkins

What has the Biden Administration’s IRA accomplished in Year One, and what have we learned about American’’s climate bottlenecks?

  • Dr. Jesse Jenkins, Princeton University, Assistant Professor and Macro-scale Energy Systems Engineer
  • Robinson Meyer, Founding Executive Editor, Heatmap

Climate Tech Analysts: Taking the Temperature

We can’t wait to read their latest takes on all things climate. What are the big issues on the radar?

  • Nat Bullard, Partner, Bloomberg NEF
  • Mark Taylor, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer, CTVC
  • Sierra Peterson, Founding Partner, Voyager VC

Is The Era of Small Nuclear Reactors Finally Here?

As the race to electrify everything accelerates, will nuclear SMR become a go-to way for nations to keep up with demand?

  • Bret Kugelmass, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Last Energy
  • Mikal Boe, Chairman and CEO, Core Power
  • Stefano Buono, CEO, NewCleo
  • Shannon Bragg-Sitton, Director, Integrated Energy & Storage Systems Idaho National Laboratory

First Checks for Big Ideas

Unlike most climate tech categories, seed investing did not dip in the first half. What’s on the minds of early check writers for climate tech?

  • Laurie Menoud, Founding Partner, AtOne
  • Stephanie Dorsey, Founding Partner, E2JDJ
  • Corinna Chen, Partner, Material Impact
  • Dr. Pae Wu, SOSV General Partner, IndieBio CTO
  • Alex Wilhelm, TechCrunch, Editor in Chief

Iceland: Ice, Fire, and Climate Tech

With almost unlimited geo-thermal and hydro power at its disposal, Iceland would like to play a leading role in carbon capture and other key climate technologies.

  • Áslaug Arna Sigurbjörnsdóttir, Minister of Higher Education, Science and Innovation, Iceland Government
  • David Helgason, Transition Labs, Climate Investor
  • Ben Joffe, SOSV, Partner

Scaling Carbon Removal

Carbon capture is a vast, promising field, but costs, technology, regulation and community engagement are proving to be tough hurdles.

  • Peter Reinhardt, CEO and Co-Founder, Charm Industrial
  • Shashank Samala, CEO and Co-Founder, Heirloom
  • Brian Baynes, CEO, Verdox
  • Candice Ammori, Founder, The Climate Vine

Funding First-of-a-Kind (FOAK) Proof-of-Scalability Projects

Climate companies struggle to find capital when they need to build proof-of-scale facilities to show their tech can really work. FOAK aims to bridge those gaps.

  • Doug Schultz, COO, Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations
  • Scott Jacobs, CEO and Co-Founder, Generate
  • Dr. Lara Pierpont, Director, Early Climate Infrastructure, Prime Coalition
  • Kim Zou, CTVC, Co-Founder

Making The Hydrogen Value Chain Work

That hydrogen’s time is almost here has been said many times, but this time there is more capital and better tech than ever. Can we get an H2 economy rolling?

  • Raffi Garabedian,CEO and Co-Founder, Electric Hydrogen
  • Dr. Seonghoon Woo, Founding CEO, Amogy
  • Natasha Kostenuk, Founder/CEO, Ayrton Energy
  • Maria Gallucci, Senior Reporter, Canary Media

The Missing Link: Grid-level Energy Storage

If renewables ever achieve their full promise, we will need to solve the intermittency problem with grid-level energy storage.

  • Kemp Gregory, CEO and Co-Founder, Renewell
  • Claudio Spadacini, CEO and Founder, Energy Dome
  • Ramya Swaminathan, CEO, Malta
  • Casey Crownhart, MIT Technology Review, Climate and Energy Reporter

Our New Relationship With Electricity

Electrifying a home is not straightforward or all that affordable. There’s a big opportunity to make that transition better.

  • Paul Lambert, Co-Founder and CEO, Quilt
  • Arch Rao, CEO, Span
  • Emily Pontecorvo, Staff Writer, Heatmap

Better Call the Specialist: VCs in Climate Verticals

Climate tech is as vast as tech itself; when does it make sense to seek VCs with deep domain expertise and capital?

  • Rob Leclerc, Founding Partner, AgFunder
  • Greg Smithies, Partner, Fifth Wall
  • Kate Danaher, Managing Director, S2G Ventures Ocean Fund
  • Katie Fehrenbacher, Climate Tech Reporter, Axios

Startup Innovation Challenge: Carbon Removal and Capture, Utilization & Storage

These are the five finalists who pitched. Carbix, Carbonauten, CQuestr8, Mantel, and NeoCarbon.  The judges were Bill Tai (XTC), Andy Gollach (SOSV/ HAX) and Sophie Purdom (Planeteer). The host was Victoria Slivkoff (XTC).

Day Two: Sept. 27, 2023

FDA and USDA-approved. When Will Upside’s Cultivated Meat Reach Your Table?

Cultivated meat leader Upside Foods is finally cleared to sell its “chicken without the chicken,” and the next steps are all about scale and cost.

  • Dr. Uma Valeti, CEO and Founder, UPSIDE Foods
  • Po Bronson, SOSV General Partner and IndieBio SF Managing Director

Holding Fast: Climate Veteran VCs Vinod Khosla and Sean O’Sullivan

  • Vinod Khosla, Founder, Khosla Ventures
  • Sean O’Sullivan, SOSV, Managing General Partner and Founder

Science, Scale, Markets, and Big Meat: The Future of Alt Proteins

Can alternative proteins, especially cell-cultured meat, gain a beach head in consumer markets?

  • Eric Schulze, VP Global Regulatory and Public Policy, UPSIDE Foods
  • Deniz Kent, Co-founder & CEO, Prolific
  • Philip Bronstein, Senior Vice President Global Food Safety and Quality Assurance, OSI Group
  • Larissa Zimberoff, Technically Food: Inside Silicon Valley’s Mission to Change What We Eat, Author

Solugen: Reinventing The Means Of Production, With Enzymes

Can a $2B+ bio-economy unicorn succeed in decarbonizing the chemical Industry?

  • Dr. Gaurab Chakrabarti, Co-founder & CEO, Solugen
  • John Cumbers, Founder and CEO, SynBioBeta

Heat-Proof Ag: How Will We Grow Food On A Hotter Planet

Agriculture will have to adapt fast to rising temperatures and a hungrier, more affluent world.

  • Brendan Collins, Co-Founder, CEO, Avalo
  • Franco Martinez Levis, CEO and Co-Founder, Puna Bio
  • Ramadan Borayek, CTO, Co-Founder, Drip.ai
  • Marina Schmidt, Founder and Editor in Chief, Red to Green Solutions

Climate Tech Investing Arrives In The Global South

Climate tech investing is just getting started in the global south. What shape is it taking in Latin American, Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia?

  • Marie Cheong, Founding Partner, Wavemaker
  • James Mwangi, Founder and CEO, Africa Climate Ventures
  • Anjali Bansal, Founding Partner, Avaana Capital
  • Matias Peire, Founder and CEO, GridX
  • Ben Joffe, SOSV, Partner

Announcing the Winner of the XTC-SOSV Carbon Capture Challenge

The Judges of the XTC-SOSV Carbon Capture Startup Challenge announce the winner and discuss their decision.

  • Andy Gollach, Principal, SOSV
  • Victoria Slivkoff, Executive Managing Director, Extreme Tech Challenge Head of Ecosystem, Walden Catalyst Ventures
  • Sophie Purdom, CTVC, Co-Founder and Climate Tech Investor
  • Bill Tai, Angel Investor; Partner Emeritus CRV; Co-Founder, Extreme Tech Challenge

Re-inventing The Means Of Production

To make industry sustainable will take a 1000 small revolutions across industry.

  • Mohammad Farahani, Co-Founder and CEO, Seppure
  • John O’Donnell, Co-Founder and CEO , Rondo Energy
  • Khorcheska Batyrova, Co-Founder and CEO, OzoneBio
  • Duncan Turner, SOSV General Partner and HAX Managing Director

Greener Mining For Critical Minerals

Critical minerals for the new climate-driven economy are in short supply. How can we mine more in a sustainable way?

  • Dave Snydacker, CEO and Founder, Lilac Solutions
  • Renee Grogan, Co-Founder and Director, Impossible Metals
  • Jon Vardner, CEO, co-Founder, Still Bright
  • Andy Gollach, Principal, SOSV

Do Venture and Science Mix?

Climate VCs have taken to hiring scientists. How do they work?

  • Ken Caldeira, Senior Scientist, Breakthrough Energy
  • Clea Kolster, Partner and Head of Science, Lowercarbon
  • Susan Schofer, HAX, Partner & Chief Science Officer
  • Tim DeChant, TechCrunch+, Senior Climate Reporter

Taking Climate’s Measure: Fire, Emissions and Sequestration

Measuring all things climate-related is a vast field in its infancy. Three founders are finding their lanes.

  • Peter McHale,Co-Founder and CEO, Gaia.ai
  • Sonia Kastner, CEO and Founder, Pano AI
  • Antoine Rostand, President and Co-Founder, Kayrros
  • Devin Coldewey, Writer, TechCrunch

How Corporate VCs Invest In Climate Tech

Corporate VCs are becoming an essential part of many climate startups’ development. It’s not just the money.

  • Coppelia Marincovic, Partner, Solvay
  • Daniel Griffis, Managing Director, ADM
  • Lisa Coca, Partner, Toyota Ventures
  • Jonathan Shieber, Founder, Investor & Journalist

The Earth Is Hiring: Tackling The Talent Transition

Who doesn’t want to help save the planet? All skills are in demand; here’s how to find the on-ramp.

  • Jamie Alexander, Director, Drawdown Labs
  • Eugene Kirpichov, Co-Founder and Executive Director, WorkOnClimate
  • Anshuman Bapna, Founder, Terra.do
  • Matt Myers, Founder & General Partner, Climate Tech Circle

Did you know?

unspun’s Weaving Machines Aim to Fix Apparel’s Waste and Carbon Problem

Funded with $57 million from DCVC, Lowercarbon Capital and SOSV, among others, unspun aims to eliminate 1% of global carbon emissions

NotCo’s plant-based foods are on store shelves, but its AI engine “Giuseppe” is the real business

While it might look like a plant-based food company, NotCo is in the data and AI business—and aims to disrupt R&D in many industries that use animal and plant ingredients.

Smartex is Creating the Textile Factory of the Future

Gilberto Loureiro grew up inspecting fabrics in a Portuguese textile factory. With Smartex, he and co-founders Antonio Rocha and Paulo Ribeiro are eliminating textile defects—and their enormous cost both to manufacturers and the environment.

Novoloop Is Upcycling Your Future

Miranda Wang and Jeanny Yao have an uncanny talent for finding value where others see waste. Their plastics upcycling company, Novoloop, just raised an $21m Series A to prove it.

Upside Foods Serves Up a Sustainable Future

To find the future of food, you may have to look no further than Emeryville, CA, a small city by the San Francisco Bay, where Upside Foods has built a 53,000-square-foot production facility for cultivated meat, the first of its kind.

Sleeping Beauty

In a timeless dilemma for new parents, Radhika and her husband Bharath discovered early that their baby daughter was a fussy sleeper. The situation left them tired and frustrated; being effective at work became a challenge.

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Entrepreneur

In December 2021 Prellis raised a $14.5 million Series B and has signed partnerships with pharmaceutical behemoths including Bristol Myers Squibb and Sanofi.

Chiu Chau Reboots a Robot into a Billion Dollar Business

It was 2016, and Chiu Chau was on the ropes. He had pitched nearly 150 venture capital firms. No one would invest. Everyone doubted the startup with the open-source laboratory robot.

RxAll’s Life-Saving Deep Tech for African Pharmacies

Adebayo (“Ade”) Alonge and Amy Kao, co-founders of RxAll had nvented a handheld scanner for detecting counterfeit prescription drugs—an illicit, multibillion-dollar industry that kills an estimated 1 million people annually globally and 100,000 in Africa.