Can AI Save the Planet? The Unveiling of Climactic's Climate Tech x AI Market Map
Authors: Raj Kapoor, Co-founding Partner; Peter Sun, Founding Associate
2023 is the year of AI.
There is a perfect storm of new developments — advanced large language models, snazzy chat interfaces bringing them to life as well as not so sexy advances in analytical AI and synthetic data. GPT-4, Transformer, and other models are evolving at breakneck velocities. These have shown the potential to perform complex tasks, such as language translation, generative content creation and image recognition at a scale and speed never seen before.
But AI was not the only thing that took off.
The urgency to address the climate crisis has never been more apparent. 2022 saw a turning point where governments, businesses, and individuals prioritize sustainability in ALL industries — not just energy — enabling the climate tech economy to thrive.?This sector is booming while most other sectors (except AI) are down…way down. Funding is accelerating, entrepreneurs are jumping in, and businesses are finally buying — with tailwinds from the US Government’s IRA and EU regulations.
What, then, can we find at the intersection of these two currents of our time?
Adding AI to the challenges addressed in climate tech is powerful and timely. AI is bringing new levels of efficiency, prediction accuracy, and innovation to the field. Analytical AI can help with predictive modeling, detecting patterns and anomalies in large data sets, and optimizing & increasing resource lifespans. Generative AI can help synthesize massive amounts of data to give thorough answers and insight in minutes. And it can also help in customer facing functions like sales and customer support. And imagine if you apply generative AI to help you re-write your renewable energy proposal to take advantage of ALL the dizzying array of incentives and penalties in a voice that is proven to close sales through the use of data. The days of spending enormous energy and time creating massive documents for grants and sales proposals could be coming to an end.
At Climactic, we baselined general AI capabilities such as workflow, monitoring, robotics, and overlaid the major climate tech verticals to see which startups are addressing each intersection.
After surveying 150+ founders, investors and AI experts, here are the 100 companies that constitute the Climactic Climate Tech x AI market map (version 23.04.10):
Between the colors and lines, we highlight three key observations:
While the application of AI in climate tech is promising, we see several challenges to overcome. Front and center is data availability and quality. AI models require large and high-quality datasets to be trained effectively, but data can be scarce or incomplete in certain climate-related areas, such as extreme weather events, or scope 3 supply chain data.?Another challenge is how quickly talent with experience in generative AI moves to climate. There is so much heat in the generative AI chat bot space that it may be a while before they migrate to Climate Tech. There is also literal heat. "AI models are trained on massive amounts of text data and are tens of gigabytes in size, making their carbon footprints very large." AI models will likely dramatically increase in size, requiring even more energy to operate.
We are here to help expedite this migration.
We would love to hear from you about your thoughts on AI meets Climate Tech. This map isn’t exhaustive — let us know if you have startups to add or new capabilities to consider. We are eager to see AI companies light up (and enlighten) each cell in this market map. We look forward to hearing from founders, investors, and anyone excited by this delicious combination : )
About?Climactic
Climactic is an early-stage VC focused on enterprise services and mobility startups seeking to help corporations reach sustainability goals by improving efficiency, profitability and resiliency. Climactic was founded by its GPs, ?Josh Felser?( Freestyle Capital co-founder) and Raj Kapoor?(ex-CSO at Lyft ), who are serial founders in their own rights, and founding associate Peter Sun. We lead / co-lead pre-seed through series A rounds and provide in-depth hands-on experience to our founders. Learn more about us at?www.climactic.vc.
Update 4/10: Market map updated to v23.04.10.
Co-founder @ Pathways, Climate AI in manufacturing - EPDs done better
1 年Loved coming back to this - we're applying AI for the data ingestion and modelling for life-cycle analysis and Environmental Product Declaration helping building product manufacturers decarbonize - Pathways
Grateful to be listed as 'Environmental Services & Resilience' startup for our TrueOcean Marine Data Platfom ??
Co-founder @ EmpowerDevTech.com and Climate Canvas Initiative| Development Tech | Governance Advisor | Former Senior Leader at USAID
1 年my heartfelt thanks to the Climactic team for including the Climate Canvas initiative in your recent market map on the intersection of artificial intelligence and climate. It is an honor to be recognized among more than 90 startups in this space.
Thanks for including us on this fantastic blueprint!
President & CEO: HiBall Events, Big Night America New Year's Eve Galas and ShamrockFest | Investor | Hospitality | Seeking M&A and partnerships
1 年This is really extensive work. I love your direction and insights!