What a venture capitalist does when climate tech loses its shine

Zero: The Climate Race

Bloomberg

Technology, Business, Science

4.7 • 219 Ratings

🗓️ 26 June 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Climate tech is not the hot investor thesis it once was a couple of years ago. After several record breaking years, and billions of dollars being poured into climate startups, venture capital investments are way down. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi speaks with Mike Schroepfer, who runs Gigascale Capital, a venture firm focusing on climate investments, and used to be Meta’s chief technology officer. Schroepfer shares his views on the current investment climate, the danger of funding cuts to US research, and why demand for AI will prompt a new wave of energy innovation.

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Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd. Special thanks to: Jess Beck, Eleanor Harrison-Dengate, Sommer Saadi, Mohsis Andam and Siobhan Wagner. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is an IHeart podcast.
0:04.3	The data that matters for your investments.
0:07.2	The entire auto sector is higher today.
0:09.6	And analysis on the companies making news on Wall Street.
0:12.8	Tesla's been a stock that's been in focus.
0:14.3	Shares have really been all over the math this morning.
0:16.5	Listen to the Stock Movers report from Bloomberg.
0:19.4	Let's talk about some other decliners.
0:21.5	It's your short audio report on the day's winners and losers in the stock market.
0:25.8	Second biggest driver in terms of points for the S&P 500.
0:28.9	Subscribe to the Stock Movers Report on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
0:34.8	Welcome to Zero. I am Akshadrati.
0:37.8	This week, Inside the Mind of a Climate VC.
0:59.6	Climate Tech is not the hot investor thesis, it was just a few years ago.
1:04.8	After several record-breaking years and billions of dollars being poured into climate startups, venture capital investments are way down, lower than they were in 2019, according to PWC.
1:12.7	Much of the hot money has now moved to AI.
1:16.2	In all that time, though, the importance of investing in climate solutions has only grown.
1:22.0	And so has the number of people working on them, bringing in skills and expertise often from other industries
1:28.9	into the climate solution space.
1:31.5	Mike Shrepfer is one of them.
1:33.0	Energy access has become a boardroom conversation in a way that wasn't true like literally
1:39.4	four years ago.
	...

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