Amazon bought the naming rights to rename Key Arena to Climate Change Arena.
Source: NHL Seattle
If Amazon is going to achieve its goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2040, it’s going to need to rely on new technology. To spur the process along, the company has a $2 billion venture capital fund to gather and grow climate tech start-ups.
Watching where Amazon is investing is one way to track innovation in the space. It can also give investors a sense of what parts of its own business Amazon intends to prioritize in the future.
“A lot of what we invest for is three to five years out,” Matt Peterson, the head of The Climate Pledge Fund at Amazon, told CNBC. “We try to look around corners to see where our needs are going to be and where the needs of other companies are going to be. I mean, with with a 2040 time horizon, you know, you can’t really afford to look one or two years out, you have to think long term.”
The Climate Pledge Fund, which was announced in June 2020, is funded entirely with money from Amazon’s own balance sheet. For Amazon, the priority is more about incubating the technologies it will need to meet its own climate objectives — making money is good, too.
“If happens to be that the companies we invest in do well and they become the next Tesla or they return a multiple of our investment, then that’s great. It shows that it’s a validation of what it is, but it’s not the main focus of the fund relative to the broader strategic goal,” Peterson told CNBC.
It’s also open to investing in companies at many different stages, and has invested from seed-stage up to series B rounds. “We can invest a million dollars in the company or invest over $100 million in the company,” Peterson said.
Amazon is not alone in investing in climate tech. The space has seen a five-fold increase in investment dollars to $32.3 billion in 2021, up from $6.6 billion in 2016, according to a recent report.
Amazon is still accepting applications for start-ups looking for funding. The company plans to make investments both large and small.
Here are five areas within climate tech that Peterson told CNBC Amazon is looking to invest in and how those areas track with Amazon’s current or future goals.
Food and agriculture investments
Food production requires a ton of land and fuel, food waste and spoilage result in methane emissions, and dairy and meat production releases in CO2 and methane emissions — all of which are problems for Amazon if it plans to get further into food production.
“People forget that Amazon owns Whole Foods,” Peterson told CNBC. “We have a number of opportunities and new business models around Amazon Fresh, which is our physical stores, as well as our home delivery of foods.”
He added, “If you look at where we are going in the coming years with growth in grocery and growth in meals and food in general, it’s something we want to get ahead of.”
Electrification
In September 2019, Amazon announced it was going to purchase 100,000 electric delivery vehicles from Rivian Automotive. Those vans are to be deployed by 2024 and are part of Amazon’s effort to convert its delivery fleet to 100% renewable energy by 2030.
As part of that electrification push, Amazon invested in Resilient Power, which is developing technology that builds electric vehicle charging infrastructure at one-tenth the size and installation time of existing charging technology.
Resilient Power charging stations.
Photo courtesy Amazon.
“It’s not as sexy as, say, an EV manufacturer, but it’s just as important in my opinion,” Peterson told CNBC. “The technology that they’re really trying to update hasn’t been changed in probably 30 to 50 years. It’s ’70s-’80s style technology, with these large power stations or substations,” he said.
For electricity to go from the grid to an EV charger, it has to go through a step-down process, and Resilient Power uses semiconductors and a software control as opposed to large physical, mechanical hardware.
“We have a big need for this and as we’re mapping out our own needs for doing this, this solution is really interesting to us,” Peterson told CNBC.
Green hydrogen
Water can be split into its chemical pieces, oxygen and hydrogen, with electrical current in a process called electrolysis. That hydrogen can then be used in various ways to generate carbon-free energy.
If the energy used to power an electrolyzer is carbon-free, then the hydrogen created is called “green hydrogen.” Amazon has made several investments in this space.
ZeroAvia is building airplanes that are powered by hydrogen fuel cells — particularly important, says Peterson, as aviation will be one of the hardest industries to decarbonize.
Infinium makes electro-fuel, which would replace diesel or kerosene in aviation fuel. “The difference is instead of being extracted from the ground and refined like fossil fuels, it’s made from synthetic components. And the synthetic components are green hydrogen and captured carbon dioxide,” Peterson said.
Infinium Reactors
Photo courtesy Amazon
The fuel Infinium makes is 95% carbon neutral because it uses carbon dioxide that was captured, not extracted from the ground. But he acknowledges it’s a bridge technology toward a longer-term goal of finding completely carbon-free energy sources.
“At the end of the day, we would like not to burn fuel to begin with, and release CO2, but at least the CO2 that is being released is recycled for orbit captured previously. So it’s, it’s an a net basis, it’s, it’s, it’s very close to zero.”
Long duration energy storage
To use renewable energy like wind and solar on a large scale depends on battery technology to store energy when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining.
Amazon is looking into long duration battery technology of various sizes and scales. Many long-duration batteries are very large and Peterson said Amazon will need batteries at sizes that are “appropriate” for the many use cases Amazon will need.
Materials: Reduction of and reinvention of plastics
For many consumers, Amazon is most visible through the packages that are delivered to their doorstep. In aggregate, those packages create a lot of waste.
The CMC Machinery system
Amazon
CMC Machinery, one of the investments announced Wednesday, has developed an automated packing machine that reduces the volume of boxes by approximately 24%. That lets Amazon reduce the size and number of plastic air pillows that go into the boxes, Peterson said. Overall, that could let Amazon reduce the use of as many as 1 billion plastic pillows by the end of 2022.
Longer term, Amazon is interested in technologies that can create more sustainable plastic alternatives, Peterson said.
“Can you create a plastic that’s not extractive? That does not use fossil fuels? And also, can you create of plastic that is biodegradable and compostable at scale?”
Google was on Tuesday hit with an EU antitrust investigation over its use of online content for AI purposes, marking the latest in a series of crackdowns from the bloc on regulating U.S. big tech companies.
The European Commission said it was investigating whether Google had breached EU competition rules by using the content of web publishers, as well as content uploaded on the online video-sharing platform YouTube, for AI purposes.
The probe will examine whether Google is distorting competition by imposing unfair terms and conditions on publishers and content creators, or by granting itself privileged access to that content and placing developers of rival AI models at a disadvantage, the Commission said.
“AI is bringing remarkable innovation and many benefits for people and businesses across Europe, but this progress cannot come at the expense of the principles at the heart of our societies,” said the bloc’s commissioner for competition Teresa Ribera.
“This is why we are investigating whether Google may have imposed unfair terms and conditions on publishers and content creators, while placing rival AI models developers at a disadvantage, in breach of EU competition rules.”
The Commission said it would investigate to what extent the generation of AI Overviews and AI Mode by Google is based on web publishers’ content without appropriate compensation and without the possibility for publishers to refuse without losing access to Google Search.
In September, the EU fined Google nearly 3 billion euros ($3.4 billion) for breaching antitrust rules by distorting competition in the advertising technology industry.
At the time, Google’s global head of regulatory affairs, Lee-Anne Mulholland said the EU decision was “wrong” and the firm would appeal. “There’s nothing anticompetitive in providing services for ad buyers and sellers, and there are more alternatives to our services than ever before,” she said.
EU vs. U.S. big tech
The move follows a slew of actions the bloc has taken against U.S big tech companies in recent days.
The Commission hit Elon Musk’s social media app X with a 120-million-euro ($140 million) fine on Friday for breaching transparency obligations around its advertising repository and “the deceptive design of its ‘blue checkmark.'”
Musk called for the European Union to be abolished in response, with key Republican officials also criticizing the decision.
Last week the EU also announced it had opened an antitrust investigation into Meta over its new policy on allowing AI providers’ access to WhatsApp, which it said may breach the bloc’s competition rules.
Signage for Tata Electronics Pvt Ltd. at the company’s factory in Hosur, Tamil Nadu, India, on Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2025.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Tata Electronics has lined up American chip designer Intel as a prospective customer as the division of Mumbai-based conglomerate Tata Group works to expand India’s domestic electronics and semiconductor supply chain.
Under a Memorandum of Understanding, the companies will explore the manufacturing and packaging of Intel products for local markets at Tata Electronics’ upcoming plants.
Intel and Tata also plan to assess ways to rapidly scale tailored artificial intelligence PC solutions for consumers and businesses in India.
In a press release on Monday, Tata said that the collaboration marks a pivotal step towards developing a resilient, India-based electronics and semiconductor supply chain.
“Together [with Intel], we will drive an expanded technology ecosystem and deliver leading semiconductors and systems solutions, positioning us well to capture the large and growing AI opportunity,” said N Chandrasekaran, Chairman of Tata Sons, the principal investment holding company of Tata companies.
Tata Electronics, established in 2020, has been investing billions to build India’s first pure-play foundry. The facility will manufacture semiconductor products for the AI, automotive, computing and data storage industries, according to Tata Electronics.
The firm is also building new facilities for assembly and testing.
India, despite being one of the world’s largest consumers of electronics, lacks chip design or fabrication capabilities.
However, the Indian government has been working to change that as part of efforts to reduce dependence on chip imports and capture a bigger share of the global electronics market, which is shifting away from China.
Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said the partnership with Intel was a “tremendous opportunity” to rapidly grow in one of the world’s fastest-growing computer markets, fueled by rising PC demand and rapid AI adoption across India.
The company is “here to finish what we started,” CEO David Ellison told CNBC, upping the ante with a $30-per-share, all-cash offer compared to Netflix’s $27.75-per-share, cash-and-stock offer for WBD’s streaming and studio assets.
Investors were certainly pleased, sending Paramount shares 9% higher and WBD’s stock up 4.4%.
Another development that traders cheered was U.S. President Donald Trump permitting Nvidia to export its more advanced H200 artificial intelligence chips to “approved customers” in China and other countries — so long as some of that money flows back to the U.S. Nvidia shares rose about 2% in extended trading.
Major U.S. indexes, however, fell overnight, as investors awaited the Federal Reserve’s final rate-setting meeting of the year on Wednesday stateside. Markets are expecting a nearly 90% chance of a quarter-point cut, according to the CME FedWatch tool.
Rate-cut hopes have buoyed stocks. “The market action you’ve seen the last one or two weeks is kind of essentially baking in the very high likelihood of a 25 basis point cut,” said Stephen Kolano, chief investment officer at Integrated Partners.
But that means a potential downside is deeper if things don’t go as expected.
“For some very unlikely reason, if they don’t cut, forget it. I think markets are down 2% to 3%,” Kolano added.
In that case, investors will be waiting, impatiently, for the Fed meeting next year — hoping for a more satisfying conclusion.
Trump allows Nvidia to sell H200 chip to China. But that’s only if the U.S. gets a 25% sales cut, the White House leader said in a Truth Social post on Monday. Trump added that Chinese President Xi Jinping had “responded positively” to the proposal.
China’s trade surplus roared above $1 trillion in November for the first time ever, despite the ongoing global trade war that has resulted in a steep drop in exports to the U.S. In the first 11 months this year, China’s overall exports grew 5.4% compared to the same period in 2024 while imports fell 0.6%.
The rebound in export growth would help mitigate the drag from weak domestic demand, putting the economy on track to deliver the “around 5%” growth target this year, said Zhiwei Zhang, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management.
