The biggest opportunity in the history of the world

Zero: The Climate Race

Bloomberg

Technology, Business, Science

4.7 • 219 Ratings

🗓️ 25 May 2023

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dipender Saluja is the Managing Director of Capricorn Investment Group, a venture capital firm with $9B under management. He was an early investor in Tesla. Today Dipender leads Capricorn’s clean tech investments effort and is betting on nuclear fusion, next gen batteries and electric aviation as the next moneymakers in decarbonizing the economy. Dipender has worked in Silicon Valley for 35 years. This week, Akshat talks with him about why he got interested in venture capital, climate tech, and how his start in the semiconductor industry informs his investment strategy.

Listen to the interview with Rebecca Shirley of World Resources Institute and Makthar Diop of International Finance Corporation to learn more about clean energy financing in developing nations here.

Leslie Kaufman’s story about TerraCycle here.
A transcript of the episode

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim, Venkat Viswanathan, and Dashiell Bennett. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Zero. I'm Akshadrati. This week, luck, location and lots of risk.
0:19.7	Last year, venture capital firms invested $70 billion into climate tech globally.
0:26.1	And a lot of that money came from one place, Silicon Valley.
0:30.5	But how did a place better known for investing in social media and silly internet companies
0:35.7	start investing in hard tech designed to solve real world
0:40.0	problems. That's what we are going to talk about today with my guest, the Painter Saluja.
0:45.4	He's one of Silicon Valley's early venture capitalists and a veteran climate tech investor.
0:51.4	Transforming energy is probably the biggest opportunity in the history of the world.
0:58.2	I think investing for financial returns and social good is not only possible, I think it's
1:09.2	easier to do than not.
1:12.5	Dipender is the managing director of the Capricon Investment Group,
1:16.2	which has some $9 billion under management.
1:19.3	The group was created in 2004 to manage the money of eBay billionaire Jeff Scholl.
1:24.5	But it's not all Skoll's money anymore.
1:27.1	Capricon's success as impact investors
1:29.5	has attracted money from wealthy families, foundations and even institutional investors.
1:35.7	The Painter made handsome returns on his early bets on Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter. He now leads
1:42.1	Capricon's Technology Impact Fund, which focuses on climate solutions.
1:46.8	Through that fund, he is invested in battery recycling company Redwood Materials,
1:51.3	electric aviation startup, Jobi, and even in nuclear fusion through helium energy.
1:56.8	These are not household names yet, but could become so one day.
2:01.8	There are few people as steeped in valley culture as they paint there.
	...

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