LiquidMetal Ventures

We are excited to welcome three leading life science investors to our upcoming panel. They will share insights on the latest industry trends and their personal career journeys. We invite you to join us for an engaging discussion. Time:?September 4th, 7:00 PM ET Location: MIT Tang Center E51-315 If you are interested, please sign up with the google form below. https://lnkd.in/exfKmJU9

Neptune Nanotechnologies Inc.’s chitin nanocrystals are environmentally friendly, stronger than steel, and lighter than plastic. If you’d like to learn more about their bio-nano materials, check out this short interview with Neptune Nanotechnologies Inc.’s CEO, Aaron Guan!

Mainstream adoption of Electric Vehicles is still facing several challenges, but Pando Electric is working on solving the accessibility concerns. With their proprietary Smart Outlet technology, charging for EVs will become faster and easier than ever. Check out how Pando Electric is making a difference today: https://lnkd.in/gmSmijqb

Thanks Forbes for covering our journey at Fuse! ? Our mission is clear:?accelerate the world’s transition to fusion energy while safeguarding humankind. With the backing of top investors and a stellar team, we’re not just dreaming big – we’re making it happen. ? Check out how we’re building and leveraging fusion technology to create innovative solutions for national security and beyond.? ? A huge thank you to our incredible team, partners, and investors for believing in our vision. Against all odds, we will achieve the impossible! Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, Aaron Prupas, Karl Wagner, Tom Mehlhorn, Jane Lehr, Sean M., Vahid Damideh, Laura Thomas.

???????????? ?????? ?? ???????? ???????????????? French AI lab Kyutai just released Moshi, an open-source GPT-4o competitor that can listen, hear, and speak. All you need to know: ?? → Yesterday Kyutai presented Moshi, a real-time AI model that processes both voice and text, and it's fully open source. → The model was built in just 4 months by a small team of 8 people. Impressive! → Kyutai is a new French AI research lab funded, among others, by Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google (received funding of around $330 million). → Moshi is super fast and works with almost no delay (only 200ms latency), even interrupting speakers sometimes (it's already much FASTER than GPT-4o). → It's a small model (7 billion parameters) that can run on limited hardware, making it highly accessible. → Unlike OpenAI's GPT-4o, Moshi will be fully open source with code, model, and research paper available soon. → This is just the first version – it will only get better! A team of 8 people has achieved this in less than 6 months. France is just killing it at the moment. From Hugging Face, Mistral, and now this. Well done guys. ???? ???? ??? --- Access the model here: https://lnkd.in/dCJBf2wX #AI #OpenSource #Innovation #TechNews #LLM

Liquid Metal Ventures Weekly Energy/Sustainability News - Issue 7/8/2024 1. Climate tech investment sees a weak trend in 2024. According to the climate tech investment report by CTVC, the total funding in climate tech for H1’24 totaled $11.3B, down 20% from H1’23 and 41% from H2’23, with overall deal count decreasing by 26%. Funding in Built Environment and Carbon Management has biggest drop of around 40%, while Energy remained somewhat resilient with only a 7% drop. Raising series B now takes over two years, compared the average of 11 months from three years ago as investors are more cautious before writing a check. As a result, high-profile climate tech companies are experiencing bankruptcies due to scaling challenges and lack of demand. https://lnkd.in/gne3Wx_6 2. Lack of affordable electric vehicles will limit widespread US adoption until at least 2028 “EV demand growth slowed in 2024, likely due to affordability,” reports BofA Global Research. Only 3% of U.S. EVs cost less than $37,000, compared to over half of gas-powered or hybrid vehicles. Thus, OEMs have little incentive to ramp up EV production. BofA researchers expect EV sales to reach 14% in 2027 and 29% in 2030. https://lnkd.in/ehji79Wq 3. Universal Hydrogen declares bankruptcy Universal Hydrogen, the Los Angeles-based energy company, informed its shareholders that the company is shutting down its business. The company has burned through the $100 million it raised so far and failed to raise further financing to develop its technology. Universal Hydrogen sought to replace traditional fossil-fuel engines on airplanes with hydrogen-fuel cell systems and electric motors that emit no carbon dioxide. https://lnkd.in/erygf6md? 4. Sila raises $375M in new funding Amid a fraught environment for battery startups, Sila has raised $375 million to finish construction of a U.S. factory that will deliver its battery material to customers like?Mercedes-Benz?and?Panasonic?by Q4’25. Sila, a next-generation battery material company based in Alameda, California, has been trying to replace the graphite in a lithium-ion battery’s anode with silicon, a material that can be produced anywhere rather than mined and processed in specific regions. Sila’s Titan Silicon anode material delivers up to 20-25% energy density improvement over the industry’s best performing graphite cells, dramatically increasing EV range and reducing charge times. https://lnkd.in/eh-PUQXb

We're thrilled to announce that Qiong Ye has successfully joined our team at LiquidMetal Ventures! ??? With her extensive experience in life sciences and biotech investments, Qiong Ye brings a wealth of knowledge and community-building leadership to our organization. We are confident that she will make significant contributions to our team and help us achieve our goals. Here's to a successful journey ahead! (tagging Ji Zhao and Zhu Liang) #WelcomeToTheTeam

Feon Energy, Inc. is looking to hire a Head of Business Operations. If you are passionate about climate change and want to make an impact by revolutionizing the Lithium-ion battery market, reach out to Wenxiao Huang, Ph.D. today!