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🕶️ From Silicon Valley to the White House: Trump’s bold AI pick

🕶️ From Silicon Valley to the White House: Trump’s bold AI pick

Climate tech faces an identity crisis

Lucila Sarquis & Paula Echeverria
December 24, 2024

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As the year wraps up, venture capital is buzzing with celebrity investors like Olivia Wilde and Nas backing startups such as Robinhood and Klarna. Meanwhile, climate tech is undergoing a rebranding debate—will it emerge as planetary health, frontier tech, or resilience tech? 🌎

Whether you're wrapping gifts or chasing funding, this week’s updates are worth a read.

-🕶️

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Six bullets of updates

🎥 Celebs like Olivia Wilde and Nas are diving into venture capital, backing startups like Robinhood and Klarna.
🌍 Climate tech faces an identity crisis: Will it be called planetary health, frontier tech, or resilience tech next?
🚗 2024's failures in EV and AV tech, including Apple's car project, highlight the sector's evolving challenges.
📱 Elon Musk's xAI tests a standalone iOS app for Grok, now in beta in Australia and beyond.
🛡️ OpenAI unveils the o3 AI model with "deliberative alignment," boosting safety and reducing harmful outputs.
🌟 Tap into Silicon Valley via startup competitions to gain visibility, network, and compete for $1M prizes.

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Tech mogul turned policy guru: Sriram hits the White House

Source: Unsplash

Sriram Krishnan, former general partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), has been named senior policy advisor for AI in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under President-elect Donald Trump. He will shape AI policy across the government, working with the president’s council of advisors and David Sacks, Trump’s crypto and AI “czar.” Krishnan expressed gratitude for the opportunity, highlighting his commitment to ensuring American leadership in AI.

A seasoned tech leader with roles at Microsoft, Twitter, Yahoo!, Facebook, and Snap, Krishnan is also known for his podcast, “The Aarthi and Sriram Show.” Close to Elon Musk, he helped rebuild Twitter post-acquisition and advocates for innovative, tech-driven solutions to AI challenges, emphasizing the need to keep the internet open.

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These companies just raised money

✈️ Prosus acquires Despegar for $1.7B, boosting its presence in Latin America's travel sector with 9.5M annual transactions.
🌱 Juniper Ventures spins out from Climate Capital, raising an oversubscribed $10.6M fund to back synthetic biology.
🌸 Swizzle Ventures raises $5M to champion women's health and wealth, focusing on caretaking and wellness solutions.
🤖 PearAI bounces back from YC backlash, securing $1.25M for its AI coding framework integrating multiple tools.

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Europe’s AI startups are raising the bar with $13.7B

Source: Unsplash

Venture funding in Europe appears flat overall, but AI startups are thriving, securing 25% of the region's VC investment—about $13.7 billion—up from 15% four years ago. This has led to new unicorns like Poolside and Wayve and doubled the collective value of European AI companies to $508 billion. Balderton Capital’s James Wise highlights Europe’s ability to support early-stage AI startups with breakthrough technology, comparable to the U.S., despite a “relatively negative narrative” about the region.

AI’s impact is visible not only in funding but also in productivity and employment, with 349,000 people now working in European AI companies, a 168% increase since 2020. Generative AI tools have significantly transformed workflows, improving productivity and reducing operating costs. Wise predicts continued AI adoption but notes a shift toward integrating AI across industries, suggesting the term “AI sector” may soon be obsolete.

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