Gigascalethe venture capital firm led by former Meta CTO Mike Schroepfer announced Monday that it has raised a $250 million fund to support founders who are “rebuilding the natural economy.”
The new fund will focus on energy, network infrastructure and critical minerals through the lens of climate technology. Continuing with the overt climate focus, Gigascale drops conventional wisdomwhich has been exacerbated into the “climate technology” thesis.
Gigascale’s second fund builds on the bets Schrep, as he’s known, has made in the three years since he started Gigascale. The company has backed a number of high-profile startups in the climate technology space, including Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Heron Power, Mill and Form Energy.
Gigascale grew out of Schrep’s study of climate technology during COVID, and the new fund is the first with an early-stage focus that includes institutional investors.
Climate technology has always been a wide-ranging field and Gigascale’s portfolio reflects this. But in recent years, the sector has increasingly focused on energy and infrastructure, a shift driven in large part by the demands of artificial intelligence.
It’s no surprise, then, that power is a major focus of the new fund. With increasing demand for electricity, there is an opportunity to invest in new sources of energy and new ways to deliver it to businesses and households.
Schroepfer pointed to solar power as a recent example of a clean technology that’s faster and cheaper and winning the market.
While solar power and batteries dominate the clean energy debate, Schroepfer clearly sees more opportunities. Artificial intelligence and wider trends in electrification have made it difficult for companies to plug into the grid. In response, many are seeking to develop their own energy sources, although even there, competition is fierce. Natural gas turbines, for example, have a waiting list that stretches into the early 2030s.
Critical Power gives an opening to energy launches. In energy-intensive industries, bringing your own power “will be a competitive advantage over time,” Schroepfer told the Inevitable podcast last year. Startups that can provide energy more cheaply or more flexibly—or both—can only win with these advantages.
But Gigascale also expects its energy investments to extend beyond manufacturing, citing grid infrastructure, critical minerals and natural artificial intelligence as other places where the company will look for opportunities.
“The companies we support win because they are cheaper, faster and more reliable,” Schroepfer said in a statement. “That’s how adoption scales. Climate impact is a result of better performing systems.”
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