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The Voltpost team.

Photo courtesy Voltpost and Google.

Thursday marked the third Demo Day for the Google for Startups Accelerator: Climate Change program, where startups in the program presented the status of their startup, capping off 10 weeks of programming and mentorship from Google’s robust network of in-house experts, training, and credits to use Google technology.

This year, the 12 companies mostly fell into three broad categories: Artificial intelligence, electric vehicle infrastructure, and providing companies with better data to decarbonize their operations. There are a couple exceptions: For example, Sesame Solar is decarbonizing disaster response, and Bodhi is improving the customer experience for home solar installations.

Google’s startup accelerator programs are all focused on using artificial intelligence, and some have industry themes like gaming or the cloud economy, particular geographies like India or Brazil, or underrepresented founders like Black founders or Latino founders. All the programs are equity free, meaning Google does not take a stake in the companies for participating, and so far 1,100 startups have participated since the programs launched in 2016.

For this latest cohort, all of the participants had to be somewhere between their seed and series A rounds of investment, already generating revenue or with an established user base, with five employees or more, and with the potential to benefit from Google’s Cloud, artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities.

Soupid Roy Chowdhury, founder of Eugenie AI

Photo courtesy Eugenie AI and Google

Matt Ridenour, Head of Startup Ecosystem at Google in the U.S., told CNBC he derives a sense of meaning in supporting climate change startups.

“I care about climate tech for many reasons, but most personally, having three young children, I often think about the world that they are inheriting. When I read the headlines about the dangers of the climate crisis, I feel a personal obligation to be a part of supporting innovative climate solutions to scale,” Ridenour told CNBC. “This is one of the greatest gifts I believe I can offer to my children and future generations.”

The programs are also good for Google business because they get early stage companies using the company’s technology, giving it an early edge over competitors like Amazon, Microsoft and Apple.

“Google sees value in supporting the best startups and founders around the world. As they work with our people, products and tools, we mutually benefit. And supporting early stage companies sparks further innovation in the ecosystem, providing further opportunities for developers to build their business on Google products — like Cloud and Android for example,” Ridenour told CNBC.

Google has hosted three climate change startup accelerators for North American companies in the last three years, and all 33 of the participants are all still operating, a spokesperson for Google told CNBC.

The Sesame Solar team.

Photo courtesy Sesame Solar and Google.

Using artificial intelligence to fight climate change

Alphabet-owned Google is itself in the midst of a company-wide push to focus on improving its product offerings with artificial intelligence. Many of the companies in the latest climate change accelerator employ AI and machine learning to help with various tasks such as agricultural soil monitoring, decarbonization of commercial buildings, and improving the process of recycling textiles.

“Teams are leaning deeper into developing AI and ML models to address climate change,” Ridenour told CNBC. “By partnering with emerging technologies like these, startups can have an outsized positive impact, developing solutions and innovations faster and more accurately than ever before.”

Agrology helps farmers adapt to climate change by providing field-level data on smoke, drought, irrigation optimization, microclimate weather forecasts from extreme weather, pest and disease outbreaks. Also, Agrology has a system to monitor the carbon content in soil to help farmers quantify carbon sequestration they achieve with regenerative farming practices and, if they are interested, participate in the carbon credit markets.

The Agrology team working on a farm.

Photo courtesy Agrology and Google.

During the Google accelerator, Agrology made its product more accurate.

“Through mentorship they received in the accelerator, Agrology was able to build a new, more efficient API that uses integrated Google Machine Learning products, increasing their training and testing dataset by over 400%, and reducing their error rate by 4x,” Ridenour told CNBC. “This will help them deliver more accurate data to farmers so they can grow better and more sustainably.”

Another startup within the cohort, Cambio, is using AI to help companies decarbonize large commercial buildings.

“Once companies have set their climate pledges, they find that data tracking and decarbonization across any real estate, whether it’s owned or occupied, is the hardest part of their sustainability journey. Implementation remains a blackbox,” Stephanie Grayson, a co-founder of Cambio, said on Thursday during the demo day.

Cambio provides a baseline carbon footprint for a building, and then uses AI based on previous building projects and recommendations from leading building scientists and data scientists to provide the customer with a path on how to get that building to net-zero. “The bottom line is we’re democratizing best in class building science across the industry at large,” Grayson said.

Leia de Guzman and Stephanie Grayson, co-founders of Cambio.

Photo courtesy Cambio and Google.

“During the accelerator, Cambio was able to connect with Google’s real estate team to get direct product feedback and discuss the topic of decarbonizing buildings,” Ridenour told CNBC. “Armed with Cambio’s ML models, managers can plot an entire real estate portfolio’s path to net zero, a near-term requirement for publicly-traded companies as part of the SEC’s latest carbon emissions transparency proposal.”

Another example is Refirberd, which is using spectroscopy and artificial intelligence to sort recycled textiles, remove buttons and zippers, and send processed textiles to the recycler that can best manage that particular batch of textiles.

Eugenie.AI uses artificial intelligence to help heavy manufacturers track their emissions, report that data for any relevant compliance standards and reduce those emissions with recommendations on how to solve a particular problem.

Refiberd co-founders, Sarika Bajaj and Tushita Gupta.

Photo courtesy Refiberd and Google.

Electric vehicle infrastructure

“As cars become more and more electrified, a variety of startups are tackling the massive EV industry opportunity in creative ways,” Ridenour told CNBC. Indeed, 14% of new cars sold in 2022 that were electric, up from 9% in 2021 and less than 5% in 2020, according to the International Energy Agency.

Batt Genie, one of the startups Google picked for its most recent climate change cohort, was spun out of Venkat Subramanian’s labs at the University of Washington and uses software to improve the function and efficiency of lithium ion batteries, which are used in consumer electronics, electric vehicles and grid storage battery applications.

The battery management system, or BMS, in a lithium ion battery monitors how much charge is left and regulates charging. Batt Genie’s software aims to makes the BMS system more efficient and productive. If a traditional electric vehicle battery lasts for about six years, the same battery can last for 12 years with Batt Genie’s improved BMS, CEO Manan Pathak said on Thursday.

The Electric Fish team.

Photo courtesy Electric Fish and Google.

Another startup within the cohort, ElectricFish Energy, is making an energy storage system that both charges electric vehicles quickly which have smart chargers that store cheap, clean power from the grid when it is available.

“The current state of electric grid is fundamentally broken,” Anurag Kamal, CEO ElectricFish, said on Thursday. “We are the only ones who understands that EV charging is incredibly connected to feeding energy back to the grid itself,” meaning that the ElectricFish device can serve as a source of backup power.

Another company working to improve EV infrastructure is Voltpost, which converts lampposts into electric vehicle chargers. Voltpost has partnered with the New York City Department of Transportation to pilot its lamp posts into EV chargers. And Voltpost is also conducting a pilot at the Detroit Smart Parking Lab in Michigan. During the accelerator, Voltpost connected with the Google Maps team to discuss whether electric vehicle charging locations could be added to Google Maps or Android Auto.

Decarbonization data and reporting

The third area of focus for the startups included in the climate change cohort was improving the data companies use to track their own emissions.

“As governments require more carbon emissions reporting, companies need better data to track their emissions. Startups are offering better analysis and tracking to help customers and consumers understand their emissions and gain actionable recommendations on how to operate more sustainably,” Ridenour told CNBC.

For example, Cleartrace provides auditable emissions data for companies.

“The issue is data around the electricity space, the energy space, and the environmental reporting space, is very hard to come by, very siloed, very error prone,” CEO Lincoln Payton said on Thursday. Before starting Cleartrace, Payton was the head of investment banking for BNP Paribas Americas. “I retired from that to address the biggest issue I saw, which is the quality data available in the transfer to the renewable energy world.”

The Cleartrace team.

Photo courtesy Cleartrace and Google.

Cleartrace is particularly focused on measurement techniques for Scope 3 emissions — emissions associated with a company’s entire supply chain or value chain, which can be fiendishly difficult to track. It’s also looking at helping companies certify how green their operations are, particularly for processes like direct air capture of CO2 emissions and hydrogen production.

Another data-focused company is Finch, which puts sustainability scores on products to help consumers make more climate-conscious shopping decisions. Finch has a browser extension that works on Amazon and Target websites and gives products a sustainability rating between zero and ten, then suggests a more sustainable alternative if applicable.

“For most of the population who believes in climate change and wants to do something about it, but doesn’t necessarily have more than seven minutes to research it online, this is a perfect solution,” Lizzie Horvitz, the founder and CEO of Finch said on Thursday.

Finch sells the data it gathers from consumer behavior to clients, including manufacturers and investors, Horvitz said.

“We are able to see who is buying what and why — that women, for instance, between the ages of 35 and 40 are twice as likely to buy aluminum-free deodorant as men of the same age and location,” said Horvitz.

This kind of data closes what Horvitz calls the “say and do gap,” meaning the difference between what consumers say they will do in a focus group, and what they actually do at checkout.

How Google is reducing the carbon footprint of its massive data centers

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Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, others in latest AI talent deal

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Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, others in latest AI talent deal

Chief executive officer of Google Sundar Pichai.

Marek Antoni Iwanczuk | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Google on Friday made the latest a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing an agreement to bring in Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf.

As part of the deal, Google will also hire other senior Windsurf research and development employees. Google is not investing in Windsurf, but the search giant will take a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf technology, according to a person familiar with the matter. Windsurf remains free to license its technology to others.

“We’re excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf’s team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email. “We’re excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere.”

The deal between Google and Windsurf comes after the AI coding startup had been in talks with OpenAI for a $3 billion acquisition deal, CNBC reported in April. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The move ratchets up the talent war in AI particularly among prominent companies. Meta has made lucrative job offers to several employees at OpenAI in recent weeks. Most notably, the Facebook parent added Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead its AI strategy as part of a $14.3 billion investment into his startup. 

Douglas Chen, another Windsurf co-founder, will be among those joining Google in the deal, Jeff Wang, the startup’s new interim CEO and its head of business for the past two years, wrote in a post on X.

“Most of Windsurf’s world-class team will continue to build the Windsurf product with the goal of maximizing its impact in the enterprise,” Wang wrote.

Windsurf has become more popular this year as an option for so-called vibe coding, which is the process of using new age AI tools to write code. Developers and non-developers have embraced the concept, leading to more revenue for Windsurf and competitors, such as Cursor, which OpenAI also looked at buying. All the interest has led investors to assign higher valuations to the startups.

This isn’t the first time Google has hired select people out of a startup. It did the same with Character.AI last summer. Amazon and Microsoft have also absorbed AI talent in this fashion, with the Adept and Inflection deals, respectively.

Microsoft is pushing an agent mode in its Visual Studio Code editor for vibe coding. In April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said AI is composing as much of 30% of his company’s code.

The Verge reported the Google-Windsurf deal earlier on Friday.

WATCH: Google pushes “AI Mode” on homepage

Google pushes "AI Mode" on homepage

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Nvidia’s Jensen Huang sells more than $36 million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth

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Nvidia's Jensen Huang sells more than  million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, holds a motherboard as he speaks during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, on June 11, 2025.

Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unloaded roughly $36.4 million worth of stock in the leading artificial intelligence chipmaker, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

The sale, which totals 225,000 shares, comes as part of Huang’s previously adopted plan in March to unload up to 6 million shares of Nvidia through the end of the year. He sold his first batch of stock from the agreement in June, equaling about $15 million.

Last year, the tech executive sold about $700 million worth of shares as part of a prearranged plan. Nvidia stock climbed about 1% Friday.

Huang’s net worth has skyrocketed as investors bet on Nvidia’s AI dominance and graphics processing units powering large language models.

The 62-year-old’s wealth has grown by more than a quarter, or about $29 billion, since the start of 2025 alone, based on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. His net worth last stood at $143 billion in the index, putting him neck-and-neck with Berkshire Hathaway‘s Warren Buffett at $144 billion.

Shortly after the market opened Friday, Fortune‘s analysis of net worth had Huang ahead of Buffett, with the Nvidia CEO at $143.7 billion and the Oracle of Omaha at $142.1 billion.

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The company has also achieved its own notable milestones this year, as it prospers off the AI boom.

On Wednesday, the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker became the first company to top a $4 trillion market capitalization, beating out both Microsoft and Apple. The chipmaker closed above that milestone Thursday as CNBC reported that the technology titan met with President Donald Trump.

Brooke Seawell, venture partner at New Enterprise Associates, sold about $24 million worth of Nvidia shares, according to an SEC filing. Seawell has been on the company’s board since 1997, according to the company.

Huang still holds more than 858 million shares of Nvidia, both directly and indirectly, in different partnerships and trusts.

WATCH: Nvidia hits $4 trillion in market cap milestone despite curbs on chip exports

Nvidia hits $4 trillion in market cap milestone despite curbs on chip exports

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Tesla to officially launch in India with planned showroom opening

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Tesla to officially launch in India with planned showroom opening

Elon Musk meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Blair House in Washington DC, USA on February 13, 2025.

Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty Images

Tesla will open a showroom in Mumbai, India next week, marking the U.S. electric carmakers first official foray into the country.

The one and a half hour launch event for the Tesla “Experience Center” will take place on July 15 at the Maker Maxity Mall in Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai, according to an event invitation seen by CNBC.

Along with the showroom display, which will feature the company’s cars, Tesla is also likely to officially launch direct sales to Indian customers.

The automaker has had its eye on India for a while and now appears to have stepped up efforts to launch locally.

In April, Tesla boss Elon Musk spoke with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss collaboration in areas including technology and innovation. That same month, the EV-maker’s finance chief said the company has been “very careful” in trying to figure out when to enter the market.

Tesla has no manufacturing operations in India, even though the country’s government is likely keen for the company to establish a factory. Instead the cars sold in India will need to be imported from Tesla’s other manufacturing locations in places like Shanghai, China, and Berlin, Germany.

As Tesla begins sales in India, it will come up against challenges from long-time Chinese rival BYD, as well as local player Tata Motors.

One potential challenge for Tesla comes by way of India’s import duties on electric vehicles, which stand at around 70%. India has tried to entice investment in the country by offering companies a reduced duty of 15% if they commit to invest $500 million and set up manufacturing locally.

HD Kumaraswamy, India’s minister for heavy industries, told reporters in June that Tesla is “not interested” in manufacturing in the country, according to a Reuters report.

Tesla is looking to recruit roles in Mumbai, job listings posted on LinkedIn . These include advisors working in showrooms, security, vehicle operators to collect data for its Autopilot feature and service technicians.

There are also roles being advertised in the Indian capital of New Delhi, including for store managers. It’s unclear if Tesla is planning to launch a showroom in the city.

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