Gigascale Capital

🌟 Meet Janet Frishberg, a Talent Partners at Gigascale Capital. Janet works with high-growth organizations and leaders—from seed stage to public companies—to build systems for hiring great people. 🌱 Background: Janet started her career in technical recruiting, scaling Airbnb’s engineering team from under 100 to over 1,000. She also co-founded Equity for Impact, a movement empowering tech employees to donate a portion of their stock proceeds to charity, with over $1.7 billion pledged by participants. Janet holds a BA in Psychology from UC Berkeley, with a minor in Sustainable Food Systems. 🎯 What Drives Her: Janet is passionate about helping founders and teams find talent that aligns with their mission. Having scaled teams at every stage of a startup, she understands the evolving challenges of talent strategy as companies grow. “No matter the company’s stage, I use core values as guideposts because they shape a company’s culture. I really enjoy the teaching aspect of what I do.” 🌍 Why Climate Tech: Janet became aware of the climate crisis in college and loves that she found a way to channel her passion into meaningful work because everything else becomes difficult to advance without a livable, predictable climate. 🌿 How She Stays Motivated and Grounded: "I take time to be in the physical world. I’m lucky to have close friends living right on my block. When things get heavy from reading upsetting news or learning about dire climate impacts, I turn to them. It’s important to keep this close sense of community while living in an urban environment." 📚 Go-To Resources: When she’s not advising startups, Janet draws inspiration from books like The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson and Adrienne Maree Brown's Emergent Strategy. She’s also a fan of podcasts like The Ezra Klein Show to stay informed. Interested in working in climate tech? Check out our open roles through the link in our comments. #climatetech #hiring #jobs #recruiting #hr

California just passed a groundbreaking law that could accelerate the shift from natural gas to all-electric homes—and save the state up to $26 billion by 2045. ⚡️🏡 The new law empowers utilities like Pacific Gas and Electric Company to transition entire neighborhoods from natural gas to clean electric energy, as long as two-thirds of homeowners agree. This strategy, known as "targeted electrification," allows utilities to modernize while cutting the costs of maintaining aging gas infrastructure. 🌱💡 What makes California’s plan different is its approach and scale: → Unlike smaller projects in places like Zurich or Framingham, this initiative covers the entire state → Starting next summer, utilities will focus on delivering cheaper, cleaner energy to the areas that need it most, including low-income communities → According to Energy and Environmental Economics, Inc., electrifying just 3% to 4% of gas customers could save California between $15 billion and $26 billion by 2045 → By 2026, the state will establish clear funding rules to ensure electrifying homes is more affordable than keeping outdated gas systems running. Full article available in our comments. #climatetech #climatechange #energy #sustainability #electricity

Congratulations to Form Energy on securing $405M in Series F financing! Form is leading the charge in energy storage with their breakthrough iron-air battery, which can store electricity for 100 hours at costs competitive with traditional power plants. This multi-day battery solution is set to transform how we store and use clean energy, enabling a more reliable, clean, and resilient electric grid. After seven years of relentless R&D and recent trial production, Form’s 100-hour iron-air battery system is now ready for commercial deployment. This new funding will help scale up battery production, create jobs, and improve green iron production efficiency. By 2028, Form Factory 1 will span over 1 million square feet, employ 750+ people, and produce 500 megawatts of capacity annually. Congrats to CEO Mateo Jaramillo and the entire Form Energy team—we’re excited to watch you build.⚡ #climatetech #climatechange #alternativeenergy #techstartup #venturecapital

Dioxycle's game-changing technology is featured in Netflix's "What’s Next? The Future with Bill Gates" 🎥 Episode 3 shines a spotlight on several new technologies tackling climate change, including Dioxycle's emission-cutting electrolyzer. It's a must-watch for those curious about solutions to fight global warming. Congrats to Sarah Lamaison, PhD, David Wakerley, PhD, and the entire Dioxycle team. #climatetech #globalwarming #climatechange #billgates #netzero

Global construction is booming—and so is the demand for low-carbon solutions. 🌍 Innovate UK just announced a £3.2m ($4.2m) investment in seven projects to decarbonize the domestic concrete industry, including Cocoon Carbon’s game-changing approach. Cocoon is on a mission to erase the environmental cost of construction by removing millions of tons of CO2 and waste from heavy industry each year. In just 18 months, they’ve developed a scalable solution that transforms waste from electric steel plants into a green alternative for cement. With a focus on scalability, their goal is to have a unit in every electric steel plant within the next ten years. Congrats to Eliot Brooks, William Knapp, Freddie Scott, and the Cocoon team! #climatetech #construction #climatechange  #startups #sustainability

In this week’s climate tech round-up of stories from the past week, we've got news of the UK closing its last coal plant, a clever food waste solution at NYC’s Restaurant Week, and highlights from New York Climate Week. 🔥 End of a (Coal) Era: The UK has officially closed its last coal plant, marking a pivotal moment in its clean energy journey. As one of Europe’s largest coal consumers, this milestone underscores the global move toward renewable energy. https://bit.ly/3XUsHS9 🍕 Make Food Not Waste: NYC Restaurant Week committed to cutting food waste. This year, Mill teamed up with 12 restaurants to set a new standard for no-waste cooking—each featuring a special dish that celebrates sustainable cuisine. https://bit.ly/3N9qOfp 🌱 NY Climate Week: #NYCW was buzzing with innovations with a number of great recaps of the action. Arbor Energy shared insights on financing for first of a kind projects (FOAKs) (https://bit.ly/3TTUqRC) and Martin Schmidbaur highlighted topics top of mind for investors (https://bit.ly/4gSeT3a). Meanwhile, our investment team shared their takeaways too (https://bit.ly/4dDq10J). 🗽 Climate Tech Takes Over Times Square: More from #NYCW where Norrsken announced their prestigious Impact List naming 100 of the world’s most promising impact startups, including our very own Dioxycle who got a big shoutout from the Nasdaq Tower in Times Square. https://bit.ly/4eMgkhG 🏢 Cement’s Green Era: Canary Media Inc. featured companies working to decarbonize cement, including Gigascale portfolio company, Cocoon talking about their recent pre-seed round and how the team is turning a by-product of electric steel making into a low-carbon replacement for cement. https://bit.ly/3ZPCn2J 🧐 Next week, we’ll be on the ground at The Engine Accelerator's Tough Tech Summit in Boston. Let us know if you’ll be there, and stay tuned for more updates! #roundup #climatetech #climatechange #sustainability #nycrestaurantweek #hardtech

Last week Mike Schroepfer, Victoria Beasley, and Kevin S. Zhang from the Gigascale investment team attended New York Climate Week. It's always exciting to see so many climate-focused people come together (including some of our founders Brad Hartwig from Arbor Energy, Eliot Brooks from Cocoon, and Brendan Hermalyn from Thalo Labs), and this year saw a shift from setting ambitious goals to celebrating real progress while driving more action through interactive sessions. So, what's next for the future of climate tech? Here are some takeaways from the team: ⚡️Grid Infrastructure: Increasing renewables and accelerating energy demand require increased focus on grid interconnection, transmission, and distribution 💵 Early-Stage Startups Maturing: Early-stage climate tech startups are entering next stage of growth and need a mindset shift toward project-based financing metrics 🤖 AI and Energy Demand: AI energy demand growth provides a unique opportunity for new, cleaner energy sources, and can drive cost curves down enough to replace incumbent energy sources That’s a wrap on another great year at NY Climate Week. We're already looking forward to what next year will bring. #nycw #nyclimateweek #climatetech #climatechange #sustainability

The United States produces 90 million metric tons of cement each year to build roads, bridges, and cities. This cement production alone generates emissions equal to 16 million gas-powered cars annually. 🚗 Companies like Cocoon are working to change that. With $5.4 million in pre-seed funding raised earlier this year, Cocoon is scaling a modular solution that can turn e-slag—a byproduct of electric steelmaking—into a low-carbon material that can replace a good portion of cement, a key ingredient in concrete and big source of the industry's emissions. Here’s how it works: Traditionally, the concrete industry has used slag from steel production to replace cement. But as the industry electrifies, the new e-slag has become unusable. Enter Cocoon: the company's units integrate seamlessly into existing steel production, using a two-step process to transform e-slag into a material that can replace cement in concrete. By relinking these two industries critical to cleaning up global construction, Cocoon's process has the potential to reduce emissions from both. Read more about what Cocoon and other companies are doing to decarbonize the construction industry over at Canary Media Inc. (linked in our comments) #climatetech #climatechange #construction #innovation #sustainability

12 years ago, coal powered 40% of the UK’s electricity. Today, that number is 0%. 🌍 This success offers a blueprint for what’s possible when a nation commits to clean energy. The UK is now halfway to its goal of running entirely on renewables by 2030, with wind and solar generating over half of the country’s electricity. Along the way, they’ve avoided an estimated £2.9 billion in costs by expanding renewables instead of sticking with coal at 2023 prices. So how did a nation so dependent on coal make this shift? Here are the five key moves that transformed the UK’s energy landscape: 1️⃣ Set clear decarbonization goals: The UK’s Climate Change Act made it clear—coal had no future in a net-zero world. The phase-out target for coal was set for 2025 (later moved up to 2024). 2️⃣ Coal became too costly: Rising carbon prices and pollution controls made coal more expensive than gas and renewables. 3️⃣ Backed offshore wind: Long-term government support for offshore wind helped it quickly become a major part of the UK’s energy mix. 4️⃣ Reformed the market: By reshaping energy markets to attract investment in renewables, the UK triggered rapid growth in wind and solar power. 5️⃣ Upgraded the grid: Strategic grid investments allowed more renewable energy to replace coal even faster. The UK’s journey from coal to clean energy shows how smart policies and investments can drive real, lasting change. It’s a blueprint for accelerating the global transition to clean energy. 🌱 Check out the full report in our comments. Video by the European Environmental Bureau #climatechange #sustainability #renewableenergy #energytransition #UKenergy

Exciting news from Dioxycle. ✨ They’ve been named one of the 49 most promising impact startups in Europe, earning a spot on Norrsken’s prestigious Impact/100 list. 🌍 This list highlights companies developing scalable technologies with the potential to positively impact over 1 billion lives. As part of this recognition, Dioxycle was featured on the iconic Nasdaq Tower in Times Square—an exciting moment that shines a light on their breakthrough electrolysis technology, which turns industrial carbon emissions into sustainable ethylene using renewable electricity. Congrats to Sarah Lamaison, PhD, David Wakerley, PhD, and the entire Dioxycle team on this milestone. #impact100 #climatetech #cleantech #startup #climatechange