I have spoken to over 100 climate VCs in the past three years.

A partner at an early-stage fund receives 50 to 200 cold pitches per week. They read the subject line. If it clears that bar, they read the first two sentences. If those don’t signal relevance to what they’re deploying into right now they move on.

95% of cold emails to climate VCs receive no reply. Not a no. Nothing.

The founders who get 47 replies in 30 days are not lucky. They understand something structural about how climate investors read.

The market is concentrated. Your list is not.

Climate VC is not one pool of capital. Of roughly 200 climate partners actively deploying, perhaps 30 are genuinely in scope for any given founder; stage-matched, sector-aligned, fund timing right, actually writing new cheques.

Sending 200 emails to 200 wrong partners burns runway and, more durably, reputation. The founders who get 47 replies send 60 emails, not 300. The difference is targeting, not volume.

The anatomy of a cold email that works

Sent by a deep-tech hardware founder raising €2.5M pre-seed. 47 replies from 63 sends.

SUBJECT: 18-month pilot → 94% CO₂ removal rate. Raising €2.5M.

Hi [First name],

We have been running a pilot at [site] for 18 months. 94% CO₂ removal rate. €110/tonne all-in at pilot scale. Roadmap to €40/tonne by 2028 with the capital from this round.

[Their fund] backed [portfolio company] in industrial carbon removal. We are a direct fit for that thesis.

Would a 15-minute call this week or next work?

[Name] · [Company] · [one-line description] · [website]

67 words. No deck. No attachments.

The subject line is a data point, not a headline. Climate VCs ignore “revolutionary” and “urgent.” They respond to numbers they cannot already know.

“18 months” matters more than the technology. Duration means capital deployed and not lost. A running system at 18 months is not a deck - the core technical risk is visibly down.

“94% removal rate. €110/tonne.” A VC who backs industrial carbon knows what €110/tonne means today and what €40 by 2028 would mean. That is a signal they can evaluate in three seconds.

The thesis mirror is not flattery. Referencing a portfolio company tells the investor you read their memos and know precisely why you fit. Most cold emails skip this entirely.

“15-minute call this week or next” is something a person can answer in five seconds. Specificity lowers friction. Lower friction means higher reply rate.

The benchmark numbers

The industry baseline for a VC cold email is 1-2% reply rate. An untargeted blast sits at that floor. Add targeting and you reach 8-15%. Add a thesis mirror and you reach 20-35%. Add verified pilot data and you are at 47-74%.

That gap is explained entirely by targeting and signal quality, not the writing.

40% of VC replies come after the second or third follow-up. A follow-up is not a nudge, it is a new data point. A new investor committed, a milestone hit, a closing date. Without a new signal, it is noise.

Why climate cold emails fail differently

A cold email to a climate VC can fail for three reasons unrelated to email quality.

Climate-curious, not climate-committed. Their last deal was 24 months ago. No email converts a tourist into a conviction investor. The list filter matters before the email matters.

Technology framing mismatched to thesis. Climate is not a sector. Carbon removal is a sector. Grid hardware is a sector. A mismatched email signals you didn’t do the work.

The fund is in portfolio management mode. A fund that closed in 2021 may not be writing new cheques. Almost never visible on their website.

Three filters. 300 names becomes 30.

Stage fit at the partner level, not the firm. Sector match to their last three personal cheques, not their stated thesis. A new deal from them in the last 12 months.

Apply all three. Those 30 are the only emails that matter this quarter.

The Cold Email Kit

The kit is the operational system behind this article.

12 templates across stage and sector - pre-seed hardware, seed SaaS, Series A, warm intro follow-on, re-engagement after a soft no, round closing urgency, and the break-up email that generates more replies than any other touch in the cadence.

4 subject line formulas with sector-specific examples across carbon removal, grid hardware, energy storage, industrial heat, sustainable food systems, and climate SaaS.

The 5-touch follow-up cadence - what to send at day 5, 12, 21, and 35, and the exact new signal to add at each touch.

6 mistakes that kill climate cold emails - the technology-first opening, the deck attachment, the generic framing, the firm-level address, the single follow-up, and asking for feedback instead of a meeting.

Download below. Use template 01 for your first send this week.

If you found this useful, these three are worth your time:

300 names on your list. Maybe 30 that matter. The three filters that take your investor list from 300 to 30. How to find the climate partners who are actually writing cheques right now.

VCs know in 90 seconds. Here’s what they see. The financial model mistake that kills climate pitches before the meeting starts. And the four structural differences between a real climate model and an adapted SaaS template.

They are buying everything. Are you selling? Four companies. 27 gigawatts. How the hyperscaler energy procurement wave is reshaping climate fundraising and which founders are positioned for it.

The window is Q2. The list is what most founders get wrong first, and the email second. Use both.

- Yoann

My Cold Email Template

The template I’d answer to is below

Read more

The mega-exits are back. And they look nothing like 2021.

This week, newcleo announced it is going public on Nasdaq.

A $2.4 billion pre-money valuation. Up to $429 million in gross proceeds. PIPE oversubscribed at $10 per share.

If you read the climate trade press, this should not be happening.

We have spent 18 months being told climate is dead. ESG is over. The capital has rotated to AI. Founders should pivot.

Then this week, this happened.

What nobody is connecting

Two weeks ago, Fervo Energy IPO’d on Nasdaq.

Priced at $27. Raised $1.89 billion. Opened up 30%. Currently valued at around $10 billion.

The largest climate tech IPO of 2026. The largest energy IPO since 2013.

The killer detail buried in the S-1: Fervo has a 3 GW framework agreement with Google. Right of first refusal on new capacity through 2028. That single line is what made the IPO viable.

Now newcleo follows.

A lead-cooled fast modular reactor builder running on recycled nuclear waste. $755M already raised privately. SPAC-ing to public markets with strategic deployment money for Europe and the US.

And remember the pattern: NuScale via SPAC in 2022. Oklo via SPAC in 2024, now NYSE-listed. Fervo IPO May 2026. newcleo Nasdaq SPAC May 2026.

Four exits. All in nuclear, geothermal, or advanced firm power.

This is not noise.

Why these specifically

Climate is not the same asset class it was three years ago.

Carbon credit startups raised $9 billion at peak in 2021 and most of those companies do not exist anymore.

What’s working in 2026 is different.

It is companies that sell firm, dispatchable, clean electrons to customers with infinite demand and limitless balance sheets.

Hyperscalers built the $725 billion AI capex wave. That wave needs power. Specifically: nuclear baseload, geothermal baseload, advanced firm capacity. 24/7. At scale.

I wrote about this last week in They are buying everything. Are you selling?

Four hyperscalers. 27 gigawatts contracted in 18 months.

That is the demand curve. Fervo and newcleo are what it looks like to be on the right side of it.

The new climate playbook

The exits coming this decade will not look like 2021.

No carbon SaaS. No accounting tools. No marketplaces.

The companies that exit are the ones that:

• Sell electrons or molecules, not software

• Have hyperscaler offtake agreements signed

• Operate at gigawatt scale

• Build real assets that throw off real cash

That is a very specific founder profile. And it is who public markets are now rewarding.

If you build clean firm power, advanced nuclear, geothermal, grid hardware, or any of the picks-and-shovels of the electron economy, this is your decade.

Track every deal as it happens on my AI Infrastructure Map. Top VC and PE analysts are using it daily. Activity has picked up like crazy in recent weeks.

Final thought

Climate is not dead.

Climate has been quietly reorganized around the only customer that matters right now: hyperscalers buying electrons faster than the grid can produce them.

The companies that read this signal in 2023 are listing in 2026.

The ones that read it in 2026 will list in 2029.

If you are raising right now and your story sits at the intersection of energy, AI, and firm power, this is the moment.

See you Tuesday for another unique resource.

—Yoann

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🚨 Half my portfolio is now using VCboom (previously called Claude Fundraiser) to prep for the June raise window. The deck score alone is worth the seat. And it matches you automatically with the best investors across 47,000 angels, FOs and VCs. Promo code CODE20 for readers here.

Something happened last year that most climate founders missed.

The corporate clean energy market contracted for the first time in nearly a decade.

Overall volumes fell 10%. Smaller buyers pulled back hard. The number of unique corporate buyers in the US dropped 51% in a single year, down to just 33.

But four companies went the other direction.

Source: BloombergNEF. Meta and Amazon alone contracted a combined 20.4 GW in 2025. Four companies drove 49% of the entire global corporate clean energy market.

Meta. Amazon. Google. Microsoft.

Together, they contracted 49% of all clean energy deals globally in 2025. Meta and Amazon alone signed a combined 27 gigawatts. The US market hit a record 29.5 GW in total deals. The four hyperscalers drove almost all of it.

Think about what that means.

The corporate clean energy market did not collapse. It consolidated.

Into four buyers with essentially unlimited balance sheets and a single urgent need: firm, clean, 24/7 power. At a scale the grid cannot currently provide.

This is not a procurement story

I want to be precise here, because the framing matters.

These companies are not signing PPAs because of ESG targets.

They are signing them because they are building AI infrastructure that will consume roughly 60 gigawatts of new power demand over the next three years. More than the entire generating capacity of Germany.

The chips are expensive. The data centers are expensive. The one constraint they cannot engineer around is power.

So they are not waiting for the grid to solve it.

They are going to the source.

Microsoft restarted Three Mile Island under a 20-year, 835 MW deal with Constellation Energy. The first time a retired US nuclear plant has been brought back online for a single corporate customer. Constellation is spending $1.6 billion on the refurbishment. Target: 2027.

Google signed the first corporate agreement in the US for a fleet of small modular reactors, through Kairos Power: 500 MW across six to seven reactors, first delivery targeted for 2030. Google also anchored a 3 GW geothermal framework agreement with Fervo Energy in March 2026, the largest clean energy deal in geothermal history.

Amazon holds a portfolio of over 700 energy projects across 28 countries, including four nuclear power agreements and 11 utility-scale battery storage deals.

Meta’s 2025 nuclear procurement alone reached 4.7 GW. It has since announced a 6.6 GW nuclear procurement strategy for its “Prometheus” AI data center campus.

These are not incremental moves. They are structural commitments.

The market has two speeds now

This is the part that should grab every founder’s attention.

The BNEF analyst who authored the report put it directly: “Corporate clean energy buyers are operating at two different speeds. Large tech buyers are venturing into bigger deals and frontier technologies, while smaller companies are grappling with power market realities.”

Two speeds.

On one side: hyperscalers with $50 to $100 billion annual energy budgets, moving fast into nuclear, geothermal, long-duration storage. The technologies that can deliver firm, 24/7 power.

On the other side: everyone else. Pulling back. Priced out. Waiting.

The startups getting funded right now are the ones that can serve the first group.

Fervo Energy just IPO’d at a $1.89 billion valuation with a 3 GW Google framework agreement and $7.2 billion in contracted revenue. Kairos Power is backed by Google’s direct investment. Commonwealth Fusion is backed by Microsoft. The pattern is clear.

A hyperscaler offtake agreement has become the most valuable commercial signal in climate fundraising. More credible than a pilot. More bankable than a government grant. More durable than an IRA credit.

Founders in firm clean power, grid hardware, advanced nuclear, long-duration storage, and industrial heat are sitting at the centre of a demand wave that has no historical precedent.

But only if they know where to aim.

What the tracker shows

I have been compiling every signed deal between hyperscalers and clean energy companies since January 2025.

The full tracker covers 40+ deals. It includes the buyer, the energy company, the technology, the contracted volume, the deal structure, and in several cases, the procurement leads who actually made the decision.

This is not publicly available in one place. BloombergNEF charges $2,000 a year for parts of it. The procurement contact data does not exist in any database I am aware of.

The tracker is below.

It is the only document you need before your next investor meeting, your next offtake conversation, or your next fundraise.

The 2026 AI Energy PPA Tracker

40+ hyperscaler clean energy deals. Buyer, seller, technology, volume, deal structure, and procurement contacts.

Unlocking this gets you:

📌 The full 40+ deal tracker (Excel + Notion)

⚡ Procurement leads for Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta energy teams

🔬 Deal structure breakdown: PPA vs. offtake vs. equity stake vs. direct investment

🗺 Technology map: which technologies are being signed, which are not

📁 Every previous premium asset: investor database, financial model, pitch deck framework, term sheet glossary

The tracker updates every quarter. Paid subscribers get each refresh automatically.

The corporate clean energy market has two speeds.

The founders and VCs who understand which deals are being signed, by whom, at what volume, and through what structure are operating at a different speed from those who do not.

This is the document that closes that gap.

—Yoann

Download the Tracker

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I have been on both sides of this.

I know what it feels like to hand a VC your financial model and watch their expression change. Not in a good way.

I have also sat on the other side. Opening a model clearly built for a software company.

It happens in 90 seconds.

The VC scrolls to year one. Revenue ramp starting in month four. Gross margins at 75%. Capex buried under operating expenses.

They know.

This founder adapted a SaaS template.

The meeting continues. The decision was made.

Why the template is the problem

Everything that makes SaaS easy to model makes climate hardware hard to model.

SaaS: fast deployment, near-zero capex, recurring revenue month one, 70%+ gross margins, exit in 4-6 years.

Climate hardware: €8M pilot plant before a single unit ships. 18-36 month sales cycle because your customer is a utility procurement committee. Revenue dependent on tax credits a new administration can repeal. Exit measured in decades.

If you model the SaaS way, you are not just wrong on the numbers.

You are telling your investor you do not understand the problem you are trying to solve.

The market underneath the market

Headline numbers look fine. $21.5B deployed in Q1 2026.

Underneath, the early stage is not recovering. It is contracting.

Seed deals down 20% from peak. Series A down year on year. The Series B candidates of 2028 are not being formed today.

This is not a funding drought. It is a pipeline drought.

The founders who close in this market are not the ones with the most ambition. They are the ones with the most rigorous preparation.

What a real climate model looks like

Four structural differences. Not stylistic.

1. Capex is the story, not a footnote. Staged by Technology Readiness Level. TRL 4-5 bench through TRL 7-8 commercial FOAK. Each capital layer funds the next stage of de-risking.

2. The capital stack is a waterfall. Equity at seed. Non-dilutive grants at pilot. Conditional loans before FOAK groundbreak. Project debt once revenue-generating. Each layer de-risks the next. Show the sequence.

3. Sales cycles modelled honestly. 18 to 36 months minimum. Named anchor customers. Probability-weighted close dates. Pipeline stages tied to commercial milestones. Not vague “Q3 revenue.”

4. Policy risk is a variable, not an assumption. Three scenarios: base case with current policy, downside with key credits removed, stress test with all support gone. If the company only works with the subsidy, say so. Investors know. The question is whether you know.

The clause that kills hardware founders

Milestone-based tranches.

In software, investors wire the full round. In climate hardware, capital releases against milestones. First pilot run. First signed off-take. FOAK groundbreak. First commercial ops.

If your model treats capital as one tranche and your term sheet arrives with three, your runway calculation is wrong by 12 to 18 months.

Build the tranche structure into the model before the term sheet arrives.

That single thing tells a climate VC this founder has done the work.

The template

I built the Climate Financial Model for this community. Not an adapted SaaS template with green logos.

Seven interconnected sheets. Every formula live. Every benchmark sourced. Every assumption cell blue.

📊 ASSUMPTIONS — 5-year revenue built for hardware reality. Off-take count, not MRR. COGS staged from 85% at pilot down to 58% at scale.

🏗️ CAPEX PLAN — Stage-gated by TRL 1-9. Lab bench through FOAK. Contingency auto-calculated.

💰 CAPITAL STACK — Equity / grant / debt waterfall across 7 rounds, plus milestone-tranche tracker for Series B.

📈 UNIT ECONOMICS — Four verticals benchmarked against 2025/26 data. Battery storage ($70-108/kWh, BNEF Dec 2025). DAC ($400-1,500 / $150 target). Carbon credits ($19 global / $100+ premium). Solar LCOE ($25-50/MWh).

⚠️ POLICY RISK — 7 policies modelled with base vs. downside. IRA ITC, IRA PTC, 45Q, DOE LPO, EU ETS, UK CfD, EU CBAM. Four scenarios.

🤝 OFF-TAKE PIPELINE — Probability-weighted ARR tracker calibrated to 18-36 month utility cycles. Named customer slots.

This is a premium-only resource.

If you are on the free plan, this is the template.

Every founder in this community who is raising right now, or planning to raise in the next 12 months, needs this before they walk into a VC meeting.

Climate Financial Model

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This week, Daniel Gershenson and Enduring Planet publicly cancelled Anthropic.

The trigger: Anthropic just signed to lease 100% of xAI’s Colossus 1 data center in Memphis. The same xAI being sued by the NAACP and Earthjustice for operating 27 unpermitted methane gas turbines next door at Colossus 2.

Those turbines have potential annual emissions of more than 1,700 tons of NOx.

To put that in human terms: it’s the smog-forming pollution of roughly 1.8 million extra passenger cars running for a year. Triple the vehicle fleet of metro Memphis. Sitting in one spot. Next to Black neighborhoods Memphis already calls an “asthma capital.”

The Boxtown neighborhood next to Colossus 1 has a cancer risk four times the national average.

Anthropic, the lab built explicitly as the “responsible alternative” to xAI, just became its customer.

That hits different.

One precision worth keeping

Most takes online conflate Colossus 1 and 2. They are not the same.

Anthropic is renting Colossus 1, which now runs on 15 permitted turbines after xAI was forced to remove its illegal ones last year.

Colossus 2, with the 27 unpermitted turbines, is the active lawsuit. xAI still runs it.

Does that absolve Anthropic? Not really. They are paying the same operator, propping up the same playbook, and deepening Musk’s revenue runway weeks before his $1.5T SpaceX IPO.

But precision separates analysis from outrage.

My honest takes

On Anthropic. Slightly heartbroken. Of all the labs, this one talked the loudest about responsibility. Watching them sign with Musk’s operation, weeks after losing a Pentagon AI deal to xAI, feels like watching the principled kid join the club they used to critique.

On Musk. I genuinely do not understand the 180. The man who built Tesla to save the planet is now powering Grok with illegal gas turbines and not giving a s*** about any environmental concern anymore.

On all of us. Easy to point at Anthropic. I use Claude every day. So does most of my circle. We are not innocent. The pace of adoption is producing something I see weekly: full-blown AI psychosis. Founders glued to chat windows at 2am. That is another post.

The bigger picture

I built the AI Infrastructure Map precisely to track this. Mega projects. Power deals. Picks and shovels.

The pattern is clear.

The US AI buildout is hyperconcentrated. Mega companies, mega capex, mega externalities. Communities absorb the cost. Regulators play catch-up. Lawsuits arrive years late.

China is doing the opposite. Electrifying everything at home. Exporting electrons to the world. Wrote about it last week.

The US is playing supply-side bullying. China is playing infrastructure.

In 10 years, we will know which bet aged better.

On switching to Gemini

I respect EP’s move. I do not think I will follow yet.

Claude remains the best tool in my stack. I have not seen evidence Gemini is meaningfully cleaner. Look at Google’s own AI infrastructure build-out (same gigawatts, same haste, same grid pressure). The 24/7 carbon-free pledge by 2030 is real but unproven.

The hard truth: there is no clean AI tool right now. Only degrees of damage.

Final thought

The Anthropic-xAI deal is not the scandal. It is the symptom.

When the most safety-conscious lab in the industry signs with the operator suing residents for clean air, the “responsible AI” framing is officially exhausted.

The next chapter of this story will not be written by labs.

It will be written by the communities living next to the turbines, the regulators finally waking up, and the founders willing to build the electron infrastructure that doesn’t require asthma capitals to run.

—Yoann

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Quick note: half my portfolio is now using VCboom to prep for the May-June raise window. If you missed how I ran a $2M raise through it, that one is gold. Promo code CODE20 for readers here.

Sponsor slots: I run a small number of brand collaborations each quarter with companies, tools, and VCs aligned with this climate audience. Past campaigns and results here.

$40.5bn raised in 2025. Up 8% on the year before. If you stop there, the story writes itself: climate tech is recovering, capital is flowing, the market is back.

Then you look at the deals.

1,545 deals in 2025. The lowest since 2020. Seed down 19%. Series A down 22%. Series C down 44%. The dollars went up because a small number of very large cheques went out. The rest of the market contracted. Quietly, steadily, and almost entirely out of sight.

That is not a recovery. That is concentration. And most founders are still fundraising as if the whole chart is moving in their direction.

It is not.

We have been here before.

After every correction, the same thing happens.

The generalists leave first. The tourists who showed up between 2020 and 2022, excited about climate, writing small checks, attending all the right conferences, quietly stopped deploying.

Their websites still say climate.

Their last deal was 18 months ago.

What is left is a smaller, harder, more precise pool of capital. People who have been in this for a decade. People with a thesis, a track record, and a specific mandate. People who did not show up because climate was fashionable and will not leave because it stopped being fashionable.

Of $10.1bn in mega-deals, $7.2bn went to just six deals in energy security and resilience. Capital is not spreading across the market. It is clustering in a small number of hands, in a small number of sectors.

That pool is real. It is active. It is writing checks right now.

It is also roughly 200 people globally.

The whole game.

If you target the right 30 of those 200, you have a fighting chance of closing a round in 2026.

If you target the wrong 30, you burn six months talking to people who were never going to move.

Same market. Same deck. Completely different outcome.

The mistake most founders make.

I have watched this pattern for 8 years.

A founder builds a real company. Good technology. Credible team. Addressable market.

Then they build a list of 300 investors from a database scrape.

They spend four months taking meetings.

Eighty percent of those meetings are with people who will never write the check. Not because the company is bad. Because the investor is not deploying, or is in the wrong sector, or their fund is too late stage, or they are climate-curious rather than climate-committed.

Four months gone. Runway burned.

The problem was never the deck. It was the list.

What the right list actually looks like.

Three filters. Nothing else matters until you have applied all three.

Stage. Not the firm’s stage. The partner’s stage. A fund that writes $20 million Series A checks cannot do your $2 million pre-seed round. The partner you are meeting may be personally interested. They cannot move it through their IC. Stage fit at the partner level is the first filter, and most founders skip it entirely.

Sector. Climate is not a sector. Carbon removal is a sector. Grid hardware is a sector. Industrial decarbonization is a sector. Sustainable proteins is a sector. The partners who back fusion are not the partners who back food systems. Stop treating them as one pool.

Recency. Has this partner personally announced a new deal in the last 12 months? Not their fund. Them. If the answer is no, they are either between funds, rotating out of climate, or in portfolio management mode. You will not be the deal that brings them back.

Apply all three. Your list of 300 becomes 30.

Those 30 are the only meetings that matter.

Why 2026 is different from 2022.

In 2022, volume worked. There were enough generalists writing checks that if you sent 200 cold emails, the math would eventually catch up with you.

That is over.

In a concentrated market, the cost of a bad meeting is not one hour of your time. It is three weeks of follow-up, a partner meeting that goes nowhere, two more intros that also go nowhere, and a quarter of your runway gone while you were performing activity instead of making progress.

I have seen founders do everything right except this and miss their window by one month.

One month.

The summer break is real. May and June are your window. After that, you are walking into August with no momentum, into September with stale data, pitching out of weakness into a market that has rotated to the next cohort.

The list.

For the last 18 months I have been building this.

Not a scrape. Not a database export. A curated list of the partners who are actively deploying into climate right now. Partner-level names, not firms. The actual person who will sit across from you.

535 of them.

Every entry has: name, firm, role, location, stage focus, sector focus, fund size, their most notable recent investments, direct LinkedIn URL, firm website, and a notes column with context you will not find on any public database.

I built it because every founder I talk to needs it. And what exists is either out of date, scraped to uselessness, or gated behind a $5,000 platform subscription.

It is the list I wish I had when I started.

It is paywalled below.

The Climate Investors Database: 535 active partners.

The exact partners deploying right now. Filterable by stage, sector, and geography.

What is inside:

• Partner name, not just the firm

• Stage focus: pre-seed through growth

• Sector focus: energy, carbon, food, mobility, industrial, materials

• Fund size and AUM

• Notable investments per partner

• Direct LinkedIn URL

• Region: North America, Europe, MEA, Asia-Pacific, Latin America

• Notes column with context you cannot find anywhere else

535 partners. 13 fields per entry. 12-month recency filter applied to every one.

Download below. Filter by stage and sector first. Build your 30-name list before you open your next email.

One last thing.

The market did not collapse. It clarified.

The tourists left. The conviction investors stayed. The capital is concentrated and still moving, into a smaller number of companies run by founders who did the targeting work.

You can keep sending 200 emails.

Or you can spend one afternoon with 210 verified names and walk into your raise with a list that is actually worth something.

The window is open until June.

Use it.

-Yoann

Quick note: I run a small number of brand collaborations each quarter with companies, tools, and VCs aligned with the climate audience here. If that is interesting to your team to reach 18,000 climate decision-makers, contact me here. Always happy to chat.

The Climate Investors Database

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I have been a fan of Ed Conway for years.

He takes the most opaque parts of the global energy system and makes them visible.

Which is why I want to push back on his latest one.

This week, Conway dropped a 15-minute investigation from the Permian Basin. The Strait of Hormuz on edge. Tankers redirecting to the US. Can American shale step up?

Sharply reported. Sobering conclusion.

Wrong story.

Shale is the past

The shale revolution was real. Conway calls it “the most underrated economic story of the past 50 years.” He is right.

Here is the part his video hints at without saying.

Shale peaked.

Diamondback Energy told shareholders in 2025 that US onshore oil production has likely peaked and is now declining. Permian well productivity has dropped more than 15% since 2021.

Even in Conway’s footage, the story above ground is the same. Pipelines bottlenecked. Producers refusing to ramp up despite high prices.

The Permian is not waking up. It is flexing one last time.

Look at what we are clinging to

2min. Watch it.

A century of capital, locked into one form of energy.

Now look at the other side of the world.

China is building an electron empire

In 2025, China added more than 430 GW of new wind and solar.

8 times the US. In one year.

Battery storage tripled in three years. Clean energy investment in 2024: $625 billion, 31% of the global total.

In May 2025 alone: 100 solar panels per second. One wind turbine every 10 minutes.

The largest peacetime infrastructure build-out in human history.

Molecules vs electrons

Conway’s revolution runs on molecules.

The next one runs on electrons.

You cannot embargo electrons. You cannot blockade a solar panel. Once a country builds the manufacturing base and the grid, power becomes domestic. Permanent. Compounding.

China understood this 15 years ago. The West is still arguing about it.

And the $725 billion hyperscalers are spending on AI infrastructure this year? That is not buying tankers. It is buying gigawatts.

AI runs on electrons. The country that delivers them cheap and clean wins.

The mistake history will remember

The West had every advantage. Capital. Technology. Talent. The early lead in solar, wind, batteries.

We let it go.

We mistook energy independence in oil for energy security for the future.

They are not the same thing.

China bet on electrons. The West bet on molecules.

One of those bets is going to age very badly.

Why this matters for founders

If you build in clean power, grid, batteries, transmission, or anything that turns electrons into productive output, this is your moment.

Not because of policy. Because of physics, geopolitics, and the largest capital reallocation of our lifetime, all pointing the same way.

If you are raising in May or June, this is your window. The Club is shrinking. LPs are scarce. VCs are pickier.

This week I published a step-by-step walkthrough of how I ran a $2M raise through VCboom. Deck score, investor matching, cold emails, the lot. That one is gold.

Boost your fundraising with Claude

Tuesday I’ll drop another gem tool.

Final thought

Ed Conway is a treasure. I will keep watching every video he puts out.

But on this one, the camera is pointed in the wrong direction.

The Permian is the closing chapter of the molecule era.

China is writing the first chapter of the electron one.

See you Tuesday.

—Yoann

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Quick note: I run a small number of brand collaborations each quarter with companies, tools, and VCs aligned with the climate audience here. Past campaigns and results here. Always happy to chat.

Last Saturday, I told you a series was coming. The one where I show you the AI fundraising stack I have been using for the last 4 months.

This is edition one.

I am going to walk you through one workflow, end to end, with one tool.

Not because I think you should buy it. Because I want you to see what fundraising looks like now.

If you are still doing this manually, you are not slow. You are a generation behind.

The tool is VCboom (previously called Claudefundraiser). I wrote about it briefly two weeks ago. Today I am going deeper.

This weekend, I sat down with a friend prepping a $2M climate hardware seed raise.

We ran her actual deck through the tool. What came out was so much sharper than what most founders ship that I have been thinking about it ever since.

Here is what it looked like.

Step 1. Score the deck

Most founders never get an honest read on their deck before they send it.

You know who does? The investor reading it for the first time on a Saturday morning. By the time they form an opinion, you have already burned the introduction.

VCboom starts here. Upload a PDF. Get a score across 7 dimensions in 90 seconds.

Market. Team. Traction. Ask. Problem. Moat. Storytelling.

Her deck scored 67.

Market and Ask came back at 82. The easy ones. Most founders nail them because the data is external.

Traction came back at 42. The flag was specific.

“Numbers shown but no momentum narrative. Investors cannot feel acceleration from a single bar chart. Add MoM growth and retention.”

That is the slide. That is always the slide.

I have looked at hundreds of decks in 8 years of investing. The slide that kills 7 out of 10 raises is the traction slide. The failure mode is exactly what the tool flagged. Numbers without narrative.

The score is not the magic. The diagnosis is.

If you do nothing else, score your deck before you send it. You will see what investors see in the first 90 seconds.

Step 2. Match the investors

This is where most founders waste the most time.

Standard playbook. Open Crunchbase. Search “climate seed”. Export 400 names. Spam.

Reply rates: 4 to 6%. Time to first meeting: 6 to 8 weeks. Half the list is wrong fit. The right ones are buried.

The matching engine cross-references your deck against 8,600+ investor profiles. Stage. Vertical. Check size. Recent deal activity in the last 18 months.

For my friend’s company, it returned 23 strong matches.

Not 400. Twenty-three.

She recognized 14. The other 9 were funds she had either never heard of or had not realized were active in her exact thesis.

One was a family office that had quietly written 4 climate hardware checks in the last 12 months. Not on any list she would have found manually. The kind of LP that surfaces only when something is grinding through the data underneath.

This is the part that is actually new.

The old fundraising stack was about volume. The new one is about precision. You do not need 400 investors. You need the 20 who are predisposed to say yes.

Speed is not the point. Coverage is.

Step 3. Write the cold email

This is the part I was most skeptical about.

Every AI email tool I have tried in the last 2 years failed the same way. The output sounds like AI. Investors smell it. Reply rate craters.

I tested VCboom on the toughest case I could think of. Cold email to a Tier 1 climate partner my friend has never met. Opening with a reference to one of their recent bets.

What it produced was not a template. It was a 4-line opener that quoted a specific essay that partner had published 3 weeks ago, mapped it to the company’s thesis in one sentence, then pivoted to a single traction stat.

Not “I noticed your interest in climate tech.”

Specific. Recent. Provable.

78 words. No “synergy”. No “leverage”. No closing pleasantries.

Thesis. Hook. Ask.

VCboom publishes a 3.8x reply rate vs cold templates. I cannot verify their dataset. The output quality is consistent with that order of magnitude. I have seen worse cold emails from human founders who spent 2 hours writing them.

The thing nobody tells you about cold email in 2026. It is now beating warm intros at pre-seed and seed. Reply rates flipped 6 to 9 months ago.

The reason is brutal. Warm intros got commoditized when everyone started using their network the same way. And good cold emails started looking nothing like cold emails.

Personalization at scale used to be an oxymoron. It is now a workflow.

Step 4. Coach the raise

This is the feature I did not expect to use, and now use most.

It is a chat interface. It already has your deck loaded. Your matched investor list memorized. 500+ scored decks as reference material.

You ask it questions about your specific raise. It answers in the context of your specific raise.

I tested it with the question every founder is afraid to ask out loud.

“My traction is weaker than my market story. How do I structure the slide so the partner does not lose interest before page 8?”

It did not give me a generic answer.

It pulled the specific traction numbers we had uploaded. Compared them against the median traction profile of seed-stage climate hardware companies in the dataset. Walked through a slide restructure that led with the contract pipeline rather than current MRR. Because pipeline was where the story was strongest.

A consultant would have charged $400 an hour for the same exercise. And the consultant would not have had the dataset.

If you have ever been mid-deck-revision at midnight, alone, wondering whether your moat slide is good enough, this is the answer.

What this actually is

Pull back. Look at the four pieces.

A deck score. A targeted investor list. A personalized cold email. A coach that knows your raise.

That is the entire workflow of a fundraising consultant. Compressed from 6 weeks to 2 hours. Priced at $297 lifetime instead of $30,000 retainer.

I am not being dramatic. The math is what is forcing the change.

Founders raising in 2026 against founders using this stack are not in the same fight.

The hyperscalers spending $725B on AI infrastructure this year (as I wrote about Friday) made their bet. Founders treating AI as fundraising leverage are making theirs.

The middle option. The “I’ll just use ChatGPT a bit.” The one most founders are sitting in right now.

That is the trap.

ChatGPT is a productivity hack. VCboom is a workflow. The difference is whether you are saving 20 minutes on an email or compressing 6 weeks of work into 2 hours.

I am partnering with the team to bring this to my audience because the math is too good to keep quiet.

The reason I am writing this is simpler. I have watched too many great climate founders lose to bad fundraising processes. Real traction. Real teams. Real markets. Killed by 6 weeks of unfocused outreach.

What to do this week

If you are raising or about to raise.

1. Score your deck. Free. 90 seconds. You will learn something. Start here.

2. If the score reveals a real gap (most do), fix it before sending another email.

3. If you want the full stack, the spring launch price holds for the next 7 days. $297 lifetime. Promo code CLOSE20 takes another 20% off for Climate Insiders readers. VCboom.com

If you are not raising right now, save this email. You will need it within 6 months.

—Yoann

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Quick note: I run a small number of brand collaborations each quarter with companies, tools, and VCs aligned with the climate audience here. VCboom is one of them. Always disclosed. Always tools I use myself. If your team wants to reach 18,000 climate decision makers, you can see past campaigns and results here.

Four companies just redrew the map of the global economy.

Microsoft. Amazon. Meta. Alphabet.

All four reported earnings this week. All four did the same thing.

They raised their AI infrastructure budgets. Again.

The combined number for 2026 is now $725 billion.

Up from $670 billion three months ago. Up from around $410 billion last year.

For context: that is more than the entire GDP of Switzerland. Spent in one year. By four companies. On data centers, chips, and power.

This isn’t a forecast.

This is committed capex.

The line that should make every founder pause

There is one sentence in the Yahoo Finance write-up I keep coming back to.

“For Big Tech’s biggest companies, all signs continue to point to AI as an opportunity that presents one big risk right now — underspending.”

Read that again.

The most disciplined, cash-flow-obsessed companies on earth have collectively decided that the riskiest thing they can do right now is spend too little.

Meta dropped 6% on its earnings because investors were spooked by the size of its capex.

Meta did not blink.

Microsoft is going to $190 billion in calendar 2026. Up from a $150 billion run rate in January. CFO Amy Hood told investors $25 billion of that is just from rising chip prices.

Amazon is sitting at $200 billion and is now projected to go negative free cash flow by almost $17 billion this year, according to Morgan Stanley.

These are companies willingly torching their cash flow profile to stay in the race.

That should tell you something.

This isn’t a tech story. It’s a power story.

Most people read these numbers and think AI bubble.

I read them and see something else.

A massive, multi-year, irreversible capital reallocation. Not because boards are excited. Because they are scared of being on the wrong side of it.

When Satya Nadella tells investors he is “confident in the return on these investments, given higher demand signals,” that is a CEO writing checks his board would have called insane three years ago.

When Amazon admits its capex now exceeds internal cash generation and they need to tap debt markets, that is not exuberance.

That is conviction.

Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan estimate the tech sector will need to issue around $1.5 trillion in new debt over the next few years just to finance the build-out.

That money is not going into branding decks.

It is going into concrete, copper, transformers, GPUs, and gigawatt-scale power purchase agreements.

The same chokepoints climate founders have been screaming about for a decade.

Why this matters for climate

Here is the part nobody is connecting.

Every gigawatt of data center capacity needs firm, low-carbon, 24/7 power.

Hyperscalers have already become the largest corporate buyers of nuclear in history. They are signing PPAs with geothermal startups, restarting Three Mile Island, funding SMR developers, locking up battery storage at scale.

The AI capex wave is the single largest accidental subsidy to climate infrastructure in the last 20 years.

I wrote a few weeks ago about why nuclear keeps coming back. This is the same force, multiplied.

If you build firm clean power, grid hardware, cooling, transmission, advanced materials, or industrial decarbonization, the demand curve just got rewritten in your favor.

Not in 2030.

Now.

The uncomfortable part

The capital is moving.

The question is whether founders are moving with it.

I have been raising from VCs and LPs for the last 8 years. I am watching a real divide form.

On one side, founders treating AI as a productivity hack. ChatGPT to write a follow-up email. Maybe a deck polish.

On the other side, founders treating AI as fundraising leverage. Compressing months of work into days. Targeting investors with surgical precision. Pressure-testing their own deck the way a Tier 1 partner would, before they walk into the room.

Same market. Same capital environment. Completely different exposure.

Sound familiar?

What is coming Tuesday

For the last year, I have been chewing on every AI fundraising tool I could get my hands on. Most are noise. Some are misleading.

A handful are pure leverage.

Starting next Tuesday, I am opening a weekly series with practical tips on the ones that actually move the needle.

I will show you how I am using VCBoom (previously called Claude Fundraiser) to pressure-test decks, build sharper investor lists, and engineer momentum in a round. Wrote about it here last week if you missed it.

In 8 years of doing this, I have never seen anything this powerful.

Will it get commoditized? Probably. Within 12 to 18 months, every founder will be using something like it.

But for the next 6 to 12 months, the founders and VCs taking the AI fundraising turn early will have a head start that is hard to close.

Especially right now.

The Club is getting smaller. Active LPs are scarce. VCs are reducing deployments.

If you are actively raising, you already know May and June is your window. Right before the summer break.

This is the time to put every chance on your side.

Final thought

When the most disciplined capital allocators on earth tell you the only risk is not spending fast enough, you are not looking at a bubble.

You are looking at a paradigm shift.

The founders who treat AI like another productivity tool will get ground down by the ones who treat it like leverage.

The hyperscalers already made their bet.

The question is what you are doing with yours.

See you Tuesday.

—Yoann

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Quick note: I run a small number of brand collaborations each quarter with companies, tools, and VCs aligned with the climate audience here. If that is interesting to your team to reach 18,000 climate decision makers, you can see past campaigns and results here. Always happy to chat.

I’ve been playing with Claude tools non-stop this week.

I love resources that save a HUGE amount of time, particularly in fundraising.

I came across an insane platform worth interrupting your Saturday for.

It’s called Claude Fundraiser (renamed VCboom).

Might be the most useful thing I’ve put in front of the 18,000 of you in a long time.

What I actually did

I ran 12 decks through it.

Some from founders I’m working with. Some from companies I know well enough to know exactly what investors were saying about them behind closed doors.

Then I started tweaking. Changing one slide. Rewriting a line. Re-uploading. Watching the score move.

That’s when I realized what this actually is.

Everything I’ve been telling you to do, in one place

For years I’ve been repeating the same things in this newsletter.

Fix your targeting before you fix your deck. Stop pitching climate tourists. Build FOMO into the round structure, don’t bolt it on. Your traction slide is not a list of logos, it’s a story about momentum. Your “why now” is not optional.

All of that. In one interface. Applied to your actual deck.

It doesn’t just score you. It shows you the dead corners. The slides where investors check out, the places you’re hiding behind jargon, the beats your narrative is missing.

If your traction slide is weak, it tells you exactly what’s missing and why a Series A investor is going to close the tab.

If your “why now” reads as optional, it flags it.

If your ask doesn’t match your stage, it calls it out.

It’s the feedback I give founders in a 90-minute session. Except it’s instant, and it gets sharper every time you re-upload.

I know what you’re thinking

“Aren’t we all going to sound the same if we run our decks through Claude?”

I had the same reaction. Honestly, I almost didn’t write this post because of it.

Then I used it.

This isn’t ChatGPT polishing your prose into pitch-deck mush. It’s not rewriting your voice. It’s asking the questions an investor will ask, and that your lead VC, if you had one, would already be drilling you on.

The output isn’t a better-sounding deck. It’s a sharper company story. There’s a difference.

You come out of it sounding more like yourself, not less.

The part I didn’t expect

The matching.

Most “find investors” tools give you a list of 400 names scraped from Crunchbase. Useless.

This one cross-references your deck against what investors have actually done recently. Thesis. Stage. Check size. Geography. Last three deals.

You get a short list. Maybe 20 names. People who have written checks into something structurally like you, in the last 12 months.

Not “interested in climate.” Not “climate-curious.” Actually deploying.

For those of us raising in climate, this is the whole game. The pool is smaller. The thesis fit is narrower. One wrong month of meetings and you’ve burned a quarter of your runway talking to people who were never going to move.

Then it writes the first-touch email for each one, referencing their actual portfolio. You send from inside the platform. Track replies. Follow up.

Why I’m telling you about it

I’ve been in VC for 8 years. I’ve tested a lot of fundraising tools. Almost none of them stick.

This one did. Because it’s not one tool. It’s the coach, the analyst, and the Rolodex, running on the same deck, at the same time.

And founders keep asking me the same question:

“What actually works right now?”

For the first time in a while, I have a clean answer.

If you want to try it

They set up a code for Climate Insiders readers: CLOSE20 for 20% off. 48 hours.

👉 VCboom.com

Access VCboom

The real point

Most founders don’t lose the round because the product is wrong.

They lose it because they spent 5 months talking to the wrong 40 people.

You can keep doing that.

Or you can fix the targeting this afternoon.

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📣🔥 Spoiler: Big product announcement below 📣🔥

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For the last 18 months, I kept trying to make sense of this AI craze.

Not just playing with GPT, Claude, Lovable.

But also trying to understand what’s actually happening in AI infrastructure.

It’s messy.

Lots of money. Lots of news.

One sure thing, it’s parabolic.

But hard to make sense of it all.

Hyperscalers are basically betting the farm, the farmers, and our entire society with it.

Mega Data center announcement here.

Fusion with Trump Media deal there.

Sam Altman backing a nuclear startup popping up in a thread.

It all feels historical, but nothing connects.

And if you actually want to form a view, it takes months.

So I started building something for myself.

Not content. Not another feed.

A way to see the whole system at once.

Something that answers, very quickly:

Who matters. Why they matter. What’s happening next.

Over time, it turned into something much more serious.

A proper intelligence tool.

I call it the Bloomberg Terminal of AI Infrastructure.

With a sweet little name of AI Infrastructure Map.

Goal is to visualize what’s happening. And connect the dots.

Datacenters being built. Where. How much energy capacity, from what sources.

And which startups or mega development projects being built to satisfy demand.

And where are the massive grid shortages.

Remember the Covid casualty map?

Everybody keeping their eyes on this world map.

Dreadful memory. But the idea is there.

What if there was an AI infrastructure Map that combines all the intel in one place?

The players. The relationships. Where things are moving.

And more importantly, what is actually signal.

A few top funds and operators have been using it quietly over the past months.

The most consistent feedback I’ve heard is simple:

“It’s super cool to visualize it all in one place.”

That’s the bar.

Now I want to open it up. Carefully.

Because I don’t want this to be a toy people play with for five minutes.

I want this to become something you actually rely on.

So here’s how I’m doing it.

As a reader of Climate Insiders, I give you free access to a limited preview. Just enough to understand how it works and whether it clicks for you.

And if you want full access, I’m opening early access at $149.

That gives you the full dataset and puts you in the group of people shaping what this becomes.

This price will go up once it’s opened more broadly.

Intel tools like this go up in the thousands.

What I’m trying to build here is not a one-off product or list.

It’s the foundation of a real intelligence layer for AI infrastructure.

Where capital is flowing. Who is emerging early. What moves actually matter.

But I need to pressure test this properly.

So if you go through it, I’d love your honest take.

What’s missing. What feels useless. What would make this something you come back to every week.

Just reply to this email. I read everything.

If this works, it becomes incredibly powerful.

If it doesn’t, I’ll know quickly and fix it.

Either way, I’d rather build this with you than guess alone.

Access it here → https://aiinfrastructuremap.com/

FREE Access to the AI Infrastructure Map

Yoann

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A paradigm shift.

Not in policy.
Not in speeches.
In markets.

Since the Iran war started, three Chinese companies added $70 billion in value.

CATL.
BYD.
Sungrow.

Batteries. Storage. Electrification.

Oil prices jumped almost 50%.

And still…

Clean energy stocks outperformed oil majors.

That should make you pause.

This isn’t about climate

At first glance, you’d think this is another “green transition” story.

It’s not.

This is about energy security.

China imports more oil than anyone.

Every shock hits harder.

Every disruption matters more.

So when supply chains get shaky, the response is simple:

Reduce dependence. Electrify everything.

Markets are already pricing it in

Investors move faster than policymakers.

They don’t wait for consensus.

They look at incentives.

And the incentives just changed.

Oil just proved again it’s volatile.

Geopolitics just proved again it’s fragile.

So capital is rotating.

Not away from energy.

But toward electric energy systems.

Why batteries are the real prize

Most people still think in terms of “renewables”.

Solar. Wind.

That’s only half the story.

The real bottleneck is storage.

Because renewables don’t produce when you want.

They produce when they can.

So if you want a system that doesn’t rely on gas…

You need batteries.

At massive scale.

That’s why this market is exploding.

China’s domestic grid storage market alone is expected to go from $48B to nearly $200B within a decade.

That’s not incremental.

That’s infrastructure.

This is bigger than China

China is just early.

But the logic applies everywhere.

Japan. South Korea. Taiwan.

All heavily dependent on imported energy.

All exposed to the same risks.

They’re watching the same thing:

A single chokepoint can disrupt entire economies.

And once you see that, you can’t unsee it.

The quiet paradigm shift

One analyst put it bluntly:

“This changes the entire energy paradigm.”

He’s right.

Even if the war ends tomorrow…

The lesson sticks.

Fossil fuels come with geopolitical risk.

Electric systems don’t.

At least not in the same way.

The deeper shift

This is not just about replacing oil.

It’s about redesigning the system.

From:

Centralized
Fuel-based
Import-dependent

To:

Distributed
Electric
Domestically controlled

That’s a completely different game.

Final thought

Energy transitions don’t accelerate because people want them to.

They accelerate when the cost of staying the same becomes too high.

That’s what’s happening right now.

China isn’t betting on clean energy.

It’s betting on control.

And the market is starting to follow.

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Energy shocks don’t hit everyone the same.

Right now, oil and gas prices are spiking again.

Spain is barely feeling it.

Italy is getting crushed.

Why?

It’s not about how much you produce

Most people look at energy the wrong way.

They ask:

“How much renewables do we have?”

That’s not the right question.

The real question is:

When do you still need gas?

Because gas doesn’t just produce electricity in Europe.

It sets the price.

Electricity markets work in a very simple way.

Every power source bids into the system, from the cheapest to the most expensive.

The system stacks them up.

It’s called marginal pricing.

The bids are arranged in a “merit order stack”, from the cheapest to the most expensive, shown below.

And the last one needed to meet demand sets the price for everyone.

Most of the time, that last one is gas.

Which means even if most of your electricity is cheap…

Your price is still expensive.

That’s the trap.

Everybody gets screwed up and pays the highest price.

Spain vs Italy

This is where it gets interesting.

In Spain, gas now sets electricity prices only about 15% of the time.

In Italy, it’s around 90%.

Same continent.
Same markets.
Completely different exposure.

The result is brutal.

Spain’s electricity prices are roughly half of Italy’s.

Spain didn’t get lucky

This wasn’t an accident.

Spain built a system.

Nuclear provides a stable base. Around 20% of electricity.

Then you layer solar, wind, and hydro on top.

Different sources, different times, different seasons.

The combination matters.

Because it reduces the moments where gas is needed.

And those moments are everything.

The real takeaway

Europe has been debating energy like it’s a moral question.

Fossil vs clean.
Old vs new.

But this is not about ideology.

It’s about exposure.

If gas sets your price most of the time, you are exposed.

If it doesn’t, you’re protected.

Spain figured that out early.

Others didn’t.

Now they’re paying for it.

This is bigger than electricity prices

Cheaper electricity is nice.

But that’s not the real story.

This is about sovereignty.

If your energy system depends on imported fossil fuels, you are vulnerable.

To wars.
To price spikes.
To geopolitics.

If it doesn’t, you’re not.

Spain is not just lowering bills.

It’s buying independence.

The uncomfortable truth

You can invest billions into renewables…

…and still have high electricity prices.

The UK is a good example.

More than half of its power comes from renewables and nuclear.

And yet gas still sets prices most of the time.

Why?

Because the system isn’t designed to eliminate gas at the margin.

Spain’s is.

That’s the difference.

Final thought

The energy transition is not just about building clean power.

It’s about breaking the link to gas.

Spain is one of the first countries in Europe to actually do it.

The rest?

Lack of vision. Constant distractions. Stuck managing crises instead of solving them.

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Energy shocks have a funny way of changing people’s minds.

A few years ago nuclear power was a relic of the past.

After Fukushima, most Western countries started shutting reactors down.

Germany went all in. Others followed.

The story was simple. Nuclear was dangerous. Expensive. Old. Wind and solar would take over.

Fast forward to today.

The war around Iran disrupts roughly 20 million barrels of oil per day moving through the Strait of Hormuz.

That chokepoint alone carries a huge share of the world’s oil and gas.

Suddenly the mood changes.

Again.

Energy systems look great when the world is stable. Trade flows. Shipping lanes stay open. Allies stay friendly.

But when geopolitics gets messy, the cracks appear quickly.

Europe is a good example.

In 1990 roughly 30% of European electricity came from nuclear power.

In 2026, it is 15%.

Instead of domestic nuclear generation, Europe filled the gap with imported fossil fuels. Russian gas. Middle Eastern LNG.

And since 2019, massive US LNG imports.

And those markets are volatile by nature.

Even Ursula von der Leyen admitted it this week. Europe turning away from nuclear power was a ”strategic mistake”.

One thing nuclear does extremely well is something nobody talks about.

Fuel logistics.

A nuclear plant can run for almost two years on a single fuel load. Utilities usually keep about two years of fuel stored on site.

Compare that to gas plants.

Gas plants need continuous supply. Pipelines. Tankers. Ports. Shipping routes.

Break the supply chain and the plant stops.

Nuclear plants keep running.

That is why countries rediscover nuclear every time the world becomes unstable.

The industry is already seeing the shift.

Urenco, one of the largest uranium enrichment companies in the world, now has a $21 billion order book. That is the biggest in its history.

They are expanding enrichment capacity because utilities and governments are quietly preparing for more reactors.

Not because everyone suddenly fell in love with nuclear energy.

Because energy security is becoming non negotiable.

There is another force pushing in the same direction.

AI.

Data centers consume enormous amounts of electricity. Governments want that electricity to be reliable, low carbon, and domestic.

That combination is harder than it sounds.

Wind and solar are essential, but they do not run all the time. You still need stable power somewhere in the system.

That is where nuclear suddenly looks interesting again.

There is also a technological shift that could change the equation.

Small modular reactors.

Traditional nuclear plants produce around 1,000 megawatts. Small modular reactors produce closer to 300. They are designed to be built in factories, shipped to sites, and assembled more quickly.

If that works at scale, nuclear becomes easier to deploy and finance.

Guess who’s leading that revolution?

Surprise, surprise.

This 125MWe reactor in Hainan Province is designed for electricity, heating, and desalination, and positioning China as a leader

Europe is now talking about deploying these reactors across the continent by 2030. The US, the UK, and Canada are pushing the same direction.

None of this is entirely new.

After the oil crises of the 1970s, France made a radical decision.

Build nuclear plants everywhere.

Within two decades nuclear supplied more than two-thirds of the country’s electricity.

Today, France is the only ‘nuclear native’ economy in Europe.

The result is simple. Cheap electricity. Low carbon power. Energy independence.

Energy transitions rarely happen because everyone agrees on ideology.

They happen when reality forces the issue.

Wars. Supply shocks. Price spikes.

Every time the world gets a reminder of how fragile energy systems are, nuclear comes back into the conversation.

Energy transitions are rarely ideological.

They are forced by reality.

When supply shocks hit, countries stop debating theories and start looking for stability.

That is why nuclear keeps coming back.

Not because it is perfect.

Because in an unstable world, it works.

Raising capital right now?

If you’re raising and want to engineer real momentum in your round, reply.

I’m selecting 10 serious teams for this one-time cohort.

You can learn more about it here.

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Seven companies now drive most of the S&P’s gains.

The same names dominate AI, chips, cloud, search.

The same circles back each other in mega rounds.
The same funds double down.
The same founders raise again and again.

Tech didn’t decentralize.

It concentrated.

We’re watching:

• Circular mega deals
• Hyper-concentrated capital
• Debt-fueled AI arms races
• Party rounds closing in days

Meanwhile?

It has never been easier to build.

Ship in weeks.
Prototype in a weekend.
Launch globally.

And yet it has never been harder for the average founder to raise.

That’s not about quality.

It’s about leverage.

We’re in an era of maximum leverage.

Right vertical.
Right narrative.
Right network.

You raise enormous rounds.

If not?

You polish the deck.
Chase intros.
Wait.

And the round drags.

Fundraising isn’t effort.

It’s power dynamics.

Most founders try to convince.

Very few manufacture pressure.

In a concentrated market, that’s what wins.

So I’m running an experiment.

I’m stress-testing an extreme fundraising strategy with 10 serious teams.

The goal:

Manufacture momentum.
Engineer constraint.
Increase conversion.
Compress time.

No hype.
No theatrics.

Just structural leverage.

I’ve battle-tested this inside my portfolio companies.

It works.

The format

• 1 full-day live workshop
• Exact sequencing frameworks
• Scripts, positioning, pressure mechanics
• Private execution channel

No fluff.

Fundraising is math.

Meetings don’t matter.
Conversion does.

Why only 10?

Because leverage is zero-sum.

If everyone plays the same advantage, it disappears.

I’m selecting 10 companies that:

• Are already investable
• Raising $5M–$100M
• Have a clear timeline
• Can move fast

If selected, participation is $5,000.

One cohort.
One experiment.

Why now?

Capital is concentrated.
The same circles get funded.
Everyone else gets “keep me posted.”

You can complain.

Or you can hedge.

This is a hedge.

If this resonates, reply with:

• 2 sentences about your company
• Round size
• Valuation target
• Timeline
• Geography

If it fits, I’ll send details.

That’s it.

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Last week, I made a contrarian case:

Europe isn’t collapsing. It may have already won.
(If you missed it → it’s here)

Higher life expectancy.
Lower inequality.
Comparable productivity per hour.
Lower carbon intensity.

Not exactly the picture of a dying continent.

But this week, let’s zoom in on something harder.

Because prosperity is one thing.
Sovereignty is another.

And Europe is more dependent than most people realize.

1️⃣ Defense: 55% dependent

Europe talks about strategic autonomy.

Yet between 2020 and 2024, European arms imports increased 155% compared to the previous five-year period.

Of those imports:

👉 53% came from the United States.

Remove France from the equation and Europe’s dependency on foreign weapons approaches two-thirds.

Even more uncomfortable:

• 13 European countries operate US-made F-35 fighter jets.

• Flight plans are sent to US data centers.

• Software maintenance and spare parts are partly managed remotely.

• Export restrictions apply if systems contain US components.

Dependency is not just about buying equipment.

It’s about operational autonomy.

2️⃣ Space: 90% blind without the US

Europe temporarily lost independent launch capability in 2024 when Ariane-6 was delayed.

European satellites had to rely on SpaceX launches.

But here’s the more critical stat:

👉 90% of space surveillance data used in Europe comes from US systems.

If access were restricted, even temporarily, Europe would struggle to track orbital debris and satellite positioning.

In a world of military satellites and AI-driven defense systems, this is not a minor issue.

3️⃣ Digital infrastructure: 83% American

This one is the most staggering.

US tech giants capture:

👉 83% of European spending on professional cloud and software services.
That’s roughly €265 billion per year.

Amazon. Microsoft. Google.

They dominate:

• Cloud hosting

• AI assistants

• Operating systems

• Search

• Mobile ecosystems

• Social media

• Video platforms

In France and Germany, the digital sector grows at 10% annually.
The overall digital market grows at 15–18%.

Meaning Europe is losing relative share inside its own growth market.

If you imagine a temporary embargo on American tech services, large parts of Europe’s economy would stall.

This is not theoretical.

US export controls already restrict advanced chips and AI technologies globally.

4️⃣ Energy: trading one dependency for another

Europe replaced Russian pipeline gas with US LNG.

In 2025:

👉 US volumes covered 25% of total European gas imports.
👉 Nearly 60% of European LNG imports.

By 2030, US LNG could represent:

👉 Up to 80% of LNG imports,
👉 Around 40% of total gas imports.

That mirrors the pre-war Russian dependency levels.

Yes, LNG is more flexible than pipelines.

But the geopolitical leverage remains.

Energy independence remains unfinished business.

5️⃣ Payments: 60% dependency

Visa and MasterCard manage:

👉 61% of eurozone card transactions.

In 13 of 21 eurozone countries, payment systems rely entirely on international networks.

A temporary access restriction would freeze most card payments overnight.

Europe is trying to build alternatives like Wero and push for a digital euro.

But the gap is large.

And in stablecoins, the dollar represents 98% of global circulation.

The uncomfortable truth

Europe optimized for:

• Social protection

• Public goods

• Collective prosperity

It did not optimize for:

• Technological dominance

• Digital infrastructure control

• Defense sovereignty

• Payment system autonomy

That trade-off worked in a stable geopolitical environment.

It becomes risky in a fragmented one.

This is not collapse.

It’s exposure.

Europe is not poor.
Europe is not unproductive.
Europe is not socially broken.

But it is strategically dependent.

And in a world where energy powers AI, digital infrastructure powers economies, and payment rails power commerce, dependency becomes leverage.

The real question

Can Europe:

• Keep its social-democratic model

• Maintain prosperity

• Decarbonize

• And build sovereign industrial capacity

At the same time?

That is the next decade’s defining challenge.

Last week was about pride.

This week is about realism.

The model works.

Now it needs muscles.

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Every week, I give Founders leverage

In this market, you don’t raise money because you’re “good.”
You raise because you’re prepared.

Luck is not a strategy.
Access is.

The right positioning.
The right tools.
The right data.
The right investors.

I’ve pulled together what actually moves rounds forward
the playbooks, the templates, and the curated investor lists serious founders use when real money is on the table.

If you’re fundraising, you don’t need more noise.

You need leverage.

📌 The Ultimate Investors List of Lists (12,000 VCs, FOs, Angels)
💰 The Investor List No One Talks About: 140 Family Offices
🦄 40 pitch decks that built Unicorns (how Airbnb, Coinbase, Canva got funded)
⚡️ The Ultimate Notion Data Room (all key docs you’ll EVER need)
🥇 The Most Successful Investor Update Template
📊 The Only Finance Tracker Your Startup Needs
⚖️ SAFE Note Dilution Calculator & Cap Table Builder
👯 Co-Founder Agreement Templates + Legal Clauses You Can’t Forget

And here are the capital allocators most founders never talk to:

🇺🇸 America’s hidden capital. 1,159 verified family offices
🇪🇺 Europe’s hidden capital. 2,656 family offices
🌏 3,250 Australian and Singaporean family offices
💰 316 female angels in Europe

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Every week, I hear the same story.

America dominates.
China scales.
Europe regulates itself into irrelevance.

The “declining continent.”
The “museum economy.”
The “sclerotic model.”

But what if that narrative is simply wrong?

What if Europe didn’t fall behind…
it chose a different definition of winning?

The growth myth

Let’s start with the big claim:
“The US is leaving Europe in the dust.”

On the surface, US GDP growth looks stronger.

But two basic corrections change the story:

1. Population growth. The US population has grown faster. That mechanically boosts total GDP.

2. Cost of living. Comparing GDP at market exchange rates exaggerates US wealth by nearly 40% because prices are much higher in the US.

Once you adjust for purchasing power:

• Since 1990, US GDP per capita has grown 70.1%

• EU GDP per capita has grown 62.5%

That’s 1.6% annual growth in the US versus 1.5% in the EU.

That’s not an economic miracle.
That’s statistical nuance.

The productivity myth

Another claim: Europe is unproductive.

Let’s look at output per hour worked.

• US: $81.8 per hour

• Western Europe: $83 per hour

• EU overall: $71.1 per hour

In the core EU economies of Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and Belgium, productivity per hour is virtually identical to the US.

The difference in GDP per capita is mostly this:

Europeans work fewer hours.
More vacation.
Shorter weeks.

That’s a choice, not a failure.

The prosperity blind spot

GDP alone misses something fundamental.

Europe delivers:

• Longer life expectancy

• Lower inequality

• More leisure time

• Lower carbon emissions per capita

All with broadly comparable productivity.

If your definition of prosperity includes time, health, equality, and environmental footprint, Europe’s model looks… surprisingly effective.

The carbon adjustment nobody talks about

Here’s where it gets interesting.

If you correct GDP for carbon externalities, the picture shifts again.

The US produces slightly more output per hour, but with significantly higher emissions.

Europe produces slightly less per hour, with materially lower emissions.

If we’re entering a world where carbon constraints become binding, that difference compounds.

Sobriety might turn out to be a competitive advantage.

The uncomfortable possibility

Maybe Europe didn’t lose the game.

Maybe it optimized for:

• Collective health

• Social stability

• Leisure

• Environmental restraint

• Institutional trust

Instead of maximum quarterly acceleration.

The US optimized for scale and capital velocity.
China optimized for industrial dominance.

Europe optimized for societal balance.

You can argue about which model scales best into an AI-constrained, energy-hungry future.

It is time for Europe to assert its values and defend its development model loud and clear.

One caveat

Europe is not yet symbiotic with nature.

It is less carbon-intensive than the US, yes.

But biodiversity loss, overconsumption, and externalized extraction remain real problems.

The next frontier isn’t deregulation.

It’s ecological alignment.

The narrative says Europe is falling behind.

The numbers say something more nuanced.

And maybe (just maybe) societal prosperity is not measured by how fast you grow, but by how well you live.

Founder tools that will give you the ultimate unfair advantage:

📌 The Ultimate Investors List of Lists (12,000 VCs, FOs, Angels)
🦄 40 pitch decks that built Unicorns (how Airbnb, Coinbase, Canva got funded)
⚡️ The Ultimate Notion Data Room (all key docs you’ll EVER need)
🥇 The Most Successful Investor Update Template
📊 The Only Finance Tracker Your Startup Needs

And here are the capital allocators most founders never talk to:

🇺🇸 America’s hidden capital. 1,159 verified family offices
🇪🇺 Europe’s hidden capital. 2,656 family offices
🌏 3,250 Australian and Singaporean family offices
💰 316 female angels in Europe

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I’ve been writing this newsletter for five years.

Every week.

Just saying that feels strange.

When was the last time you did anything every single week for five years?

I’m not wired for that. I usually crave novelty. New projects. New angles. New challenges.

So what kept me going?

I’ll be honest.

Traction.

And lately, it’s been wild 🔥

For those of you who’ve been here a while, you know I like building in public. I like showing the real numbers, the messy progress, the stuff most people hide.

So here’s one I haven’t shared yet.

Climate Insiders is about to cross 15,000 subscribers.

That shocks me.

I don’t write about breaking news.
I don’t chase AI hype.
I write about something most people call “boring”.

Climate. Energy. Infrastructure. Fundraising mechanics.

And yet, something shifted over the past year.

The moment I expanded the scope from ideas to utility, growth changed trajectory.

This newsletter stopped being something you read and moved on from.

It became something you save, bookmark, and forward to your co-founder.

I deliberately packed it with things that actually reduce cognitive load:
– fundraising playbooks
– investor lists you can’t Google
– pitch decks that raised real money
– templates founders reuse again and again

And yes, I know which ones you love most.

The investor lists.

You won’t find those floating around online. They’re curated, vetted, cleaned, and protected for a reason. My portfolio founders use them as the first stop when they open a new round.

Funny side effect: friends now ask me, slightly awkwardly,
“…hey, by the way, could you maybe give me access to those lists?”

That’s how I know they’re valuable.

This past month alone, 1,300 new people joined.

Which forced me to ask a serious question:

How do I keep this useful at scale?

The answer I keep coming back to is simple:
More research. Better filters. Sharper templates. Stronger lists.

My goal is to make Climate Insiders the place founders and investors go when they want clarity, not noise. Something you trust to save you hours, not steal your attention.

But I’m not a newsroom.
I’m not a media company.
It’s still just me, iterating week by week.

So I need your input.

If you answer one single question, it would genuinely help me shape what comes next:

One last thing.

A lot of you have noticed what’s happening on Substack. It’s the fastest-growing platform right now, and for good reason.

Builders and thinkers are moving there because it rewards depth, not volume.

I’ve had quite a few people ask whether I’d share more about how I’ve grown this audience, what actually worked, and what I’d do differently if I started today.

If that’s something you’d want, reply to this email or in the comments.

For now, thank you for being here. Whether you joined last week or five years ago, this thing exists because you keep showing up.

And I don’t take that lightly 💛

Yoann Berno

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To my biggest surprise, a post I wrote a year ago on co-founder agreements became one of the most saved and most purchased pieces I’ve ever written.

That post generated $4,300 alone.

Not because it was clever.
Not because it was viral.

But because it covered simple, dangerously vital things most founders skip.

I keep getting messages like:
“We almost ignored this.”
“We fixed this just in time.”
“This would’ve blown up our round.”

So I’m resurfacing it.
And modernizing it.

The fire ChatGPT prompt below will make sure you have the grand slam co-founder agreement.

It covers all the blind spots.

I’ve built the best Template for you

I extracted the juice from YC, Harvard, Founder Institute, and EWOR’s agreements to create the best possible base.

Start with this. Open it, duplicate it, then copy-paste text into ChatGPT.

Climate Insiders Co-Founders Agreement

Use AI to stress-test your co-founder setup

Most co-founder agreements fail in the edges.

Not the obvious stuff.
The weird scenarios.
The asymmetries.
The things nobody wants to say out loud.

This is where ChatGPT is incredibly useful if you prompt it correctly.

Below is the exact prompt I’ve used in the last month to pressure-test a co-founder agreement before involving a lawyer.

Copy-paste prompt:

Co-founder agreement stress test prompt:

You are a startup lawyer, venture capitalist, and conflict mediator combined.

I’m building a company with the following co-founders:

• Company stage: [idea / pre-seed / seed / growth / etc.]

• Industry: [climate, AI, biotech, hardware, SaaS, etc.]

• Co-founders and backgrounds:

  • Founder A: role, background, time commitment, cash contribution, IP contribution

  • Founder B: role, background, time commitment, cash contribution, IP contribution

  • (add more if needed)

Current assumptions:

• Equity split: [proposed split]

• Vesting: [terms if any]

• Roles and decision rights: [current understanding]

• IP origin: [university, prior company, personal, mixed]

• Jurisdiction: [country/state]

Task:

1. Identify hidden risks, conflicts, or edge cases that commonly destroy co-founder relationships or scare investors.

2. List specific clauses we should include to protect the company in scenarios like:

   • One founder leaving early

   • Burnout or part-time drift

   • Misaligned ambition

   • Future fundraising pressure

   • Acquisition offers

   • Unequal performance over time

   • IP disputes

3. Highlight anything that would raise red flags for professional investors.

4. Suggest questions we must answer now, even if uncomfortable.

Be brutally honest. Assume we want to build something fundable and durable.

Run this.

Copy-paste back into your Template.

I just saved you five grand.

If you want to quadruple-check, bring the output to a real lawyer.

But you should already be pretty set if you ask me.

Final reminder

A co-founder agreement is not paperwork.

It’s a strategy document for conflict.

The earlier you write it,
the cheaper it is,
and the more power it gives you later.

Resurfacing this because it matters.

If you’re about to start a company, or already in one,
don’t skip this step.

It is NOT about trust.

It’s about building something serious, with maturity, and planning scenarios in case shit hits the fan.

— Yoann

Founder tools that will give you the ultimate unfair advantage:

📌 The Ultimate Investors List of Lists (12,000 VCs, FOs, Angels)
🦄 40 pitch decks that built Unicorns (how Airbnb, Coinbase, Canva got funded)
⚡️ The Ultimate Notion Data Room (all key docs you’ll EVER need)
🥇 The Most Successful Investor Update Template
📊 The Only Finance Tracker Your Startup Needs

And here are the capital allocators most founders never talk to:

🇺🇸 America’s hidden capital. 1,159 verified family offices
🇪🇺 Europe’s hidden capital. 2,656 family offices
🌏 3,250 Australian and Singaporean family offices
💰 316 female angels in Europe

Share Climate Insiders

Subscribe now

Something important is happening in energy.
And it’s not where the loudest debates are.

Some of the most fossil-heavy places on Earth are quietly making the same move.

Texas.
Saudi Arabia.
Ethiopia.

Different politics. Different economies. Same conclusion.

They’re going electric ⚡️

Watch what they do, not what they say

Texas is the largest oil and gas producer in the US.
Politically pro-fossil fuels. Publicly hostile to renewables.

And yet, Texas now produces more renewable power and battery capacity than any other US state. By a wide margin.

Wind and solar routinely generate a massive share of the ERCOT grid. Battery storage keeps hitting new records.

Not because of ideology.
Because it is the fastest, cheapest way to add capacity.

When anti-renewables bills threatened investment, even oil and gas players pushed back.

Money talks.

When oil giants go solar, it’s not a moral shift

Saudi Arabia is doing the same thing, at national scale.

The world’s second largest oil producer is massively expanding solar and other renewables. Not to save the planet.

To free up oil for export.
To power new industries.
To support AI data centers.
To modernize its economy.

Solar is now the cheapest, fastest, simplest capacity you can deploy. Cost beats narrative every time.

This is not a green awakening.
It’s a balance sheet decision.

Ethiopia made the most radical move

Then there’s Ethiopia.

No oil wealth.
Limited grid access.
And yet, a ban on combustion engine car imports.

Why?

Because importing fossil fuels is economically crushing.
Because hydropower already dominates their electricity mix.
Because electrons are cheaper than barrels.

Electrification is not about being rich.
It’s about not being dependent.

The pattern most people miss

These examples look unrelated. They’re not.

As mentioned last week, electrons scale better than hydrocarbons.

Solar plus batteries can be deployed faster than pipelines, terminals, and fuel logistics.
Electricity does not require geopolitics to move.
Manufacturing beats extraction.

That’s why China is flooding global markets with clean tech.
And why emerging economies are buying it at scale.

This is not a climate story.
It’s an infrastructure story.

Add AI to the equation.

Data centers are driving electricity demand growth we haven’t seen in decades. Some utilities expect over 20 percent load growth in the next ten years.

The takeaway

This transition is not driven by virtue.
It is driven by physics, economics, and scale.

Oil states are electrifying.
Emerging economies are skipping hydrocarbons.
Coal cannot handle modern load patterns.
AI is forcing the issue.

The future of energy is not about being cleaner.
It’s about being deployable, flexible, and reliable.

That’s the bet Texas, Saudi Arabia, and Ethiopia are all making.

And they’re probably right.

One last thing

I’ve slightly reordered the Climate Insiders sections to make it easier to find what you need, depending on where you are right now:

Fundraising playbooks
Pitch decks
Resources
Big ideas

About the paywall and the investor lists

I keep getting asked why some resources are behind a paywall.

Here’s the honest answer.

Because otherwise it would be chaos.

Imagine 14,000 founders getting free access to curated investor lists.
Spam. Spam. Spam.

I don’t want to contribute to that.

Being an investor myself, I already get spammed enough.

My role here is to be an intermediary. A connector.
For serious founders.
With real projects.
To investors who actually have money to deploy.

That’s why these lists are curated, vetted, and protected.

This is not scraped data.
It’s verified emails, LinkedIn, and sometimes direct phone numbers.
People you won’t find by Googling.

The capital most founders never see

🇺🇸 America’s hidden capital. 1,159 verified family offices
🇪🇺 Europe’s hidden capital. 2,656 family offices
🌏 3,250 Australian and Singaporean family offices
💰 316 female angels in Europe
📌 The only startup fundraising guide you’ll ever need 🚀

I’m currently helping a portfolio company raise $50m.
And the first thing I started with months ago was these lists.

The value is legit.

If you’re building something serious and want to approach capital the right way, this is for you.

— Yoann