TechCrunch Disrupt 2025: 3 days left to save up to $1,130 on passes
Tick-tock! The last three days to save up to $1,130 to TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 are winding down! Get your tickets today for massive savings on Disrupt 2025 individual passes and…
German startup wins accolade for its fusion reactor design
Proxima Fusion, a two-year-old, German nuclear fusion startup, has published plans for a working fusion power plant in a peer-reviewed journal, in what is being touted as a step-change in the…
Mitico raises $4.3M seed round to capture CO2 using ‘prehistoric chemistry’
The world is in a pickle: Human activity continues to dump too much CO2 into the atmosphere, raising the risk of catastrophic global warming. At the same time, the most…
Cambium is building an AI that helps turn waste wood into usable lumber
It’s a scene that plays out in cities and suburbs across America: A tree gets cut down, and instead of being milled into lumber, the whole thing gets shredded. There…
The real reason why oil and gas companies are bullish on carbon capture
Two years ago, oil and gas company Occidental bought carbon capture startup Carbon Engineering. The transaction was hailed as a win-win: A climate tech company scored a significant exit, and…
Solar crushed 2024, but emissions were up as industry used more natural gas
The U.S. invested a record-breaking $338 billion in the energy transition last year, according to a new report, but it wasn’t quite enough to lessen the country’s overall carbon emissions.…
Valar Atomics comes out of stealth with $19M and a pilot reactor site
Companies developing small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) have raised more than $1.5 billion in the past year, as tech companies hunger for power to train AI models and governments decide…
ElectronX is building a stock market for electricity trading
Renewable electricity is cheap and clean, but also less predictable than firing up a gas turbine. Turns out that’s both a problem and an opportunity. Most solutions to the problem…
Trump admin reverses hydropower layoffs that sparked grid stability fears
This month, the Trump administration instituted sweeping cuts within the federal agencies in charge of power from hydroelectric dams, raising fears of grid instabilities in key data center markets. The…
Global electricity demand expected to grow 4% annually through 2027
Industry, data centers, and air conditioning are all expected to drive some of the fastest growth in electricity demand in years, according to International Energy Agency forecasts. The agency predicts…
Data center tweaks could unlock 76 GW of new power capacity in the US
Tech companies, data center developers, and power utilities have been panicking over the prospect of runaway demand for electricity in the U.S. in the face of unprecedented growth in AI.…
Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 team steers toward nature-based carbon credits
Few fans would associate Formula 1 racing with sustainability, but perhaps incongruously for a sport that glorifies combustion, the league has a goal to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2030.…
Microsoft powers AI ambitions with 400 MW solar purchase
Microsoft has added another 389 megawatts of renewable power to its portfolio as the tech giant scrambles to meet the power demands required to match its AI ambitions. The additional…
Chestnut Carbon gets $160M to turn old farms into forests
Nature-based carbon removal startup Chestnut Carbon has raised $160 million in Series B financing, the company told TechCrunch. The startup buys marginal and degraded farmland, plants them with native trees,…
ChatGPT may not be as power-hungry as once assumed
ChatGPT, OpenAI’s chatbot platform, may not be as power-hungry as once assumed. But its appetite largely depends on how ChatGPT is being used and the AI models that are answering…
Laurene Powell Jobs joins Amazon in backing nuclear startup X-Energy in $700M round
Nuclear startup X-Energy has added $200 million to an existing $500 million Series C round. The small module reactor specialist previously announced a deal with Amazon in October, which included…
Orgs demand action to mitigate AI’s environmental harm
A group of more than 100 organizations has published an open letter calling on the AI industry and regulators to mitigate the tech’s harmful environmental impacts just days before leading…
Presto is building Stripe for EV charging
Charging an electric vehicle in public can be the best of times or the worst of times. An EV driver can be charged and back on the road in a…
Modern Synthesis is making compostable materials that last a lifetime
Jen Keane’s claim to fame is that she grew a shoe using bacteria, coaxing the microbes to deposit their nanocellulose materials in the shape of a sneaker. But she’s kind…
E-fuels startup will make diamonds before powering jet planes
September 11 left a lasting impression on Stephen Beaton, and like many others of his generation, he joined the military. But at the U.S. Air Force Academy, his journey took…
Amazon continues renewable energy spree with 476 MW purchase
Renewables notched another win as Amazon signed contracts to buy 476 megawatts of wind and solar on the Iberian Peninsula. The power purchase agreements with multinational utility Iberdrola should help…
WeDoSolar pivots to B2B after stake acquired by Chinese solar giant
Last year wind and solar energy overtook fossil fuels to provide 30% of the EU’s electricity. With that in the background, startups in the solar space have been riding a…
Meta turns to solar — again — in its data center-building boom
Tech companies may be vocal about their love of advanced nuclear power — the flashy trend that’s been sweeping the energy sector — but they continue to add renewable capacity.…
Microsoft signs massive carbon credit deal with reforestation startup Chestnut Carbon
Microsoft announced Thursday that it’s buying over 7 million tons of carbon credits from Chestnut Carbon. The 25-year deal would enable Chestnut Carbon to reforest 60,000 acres of land across…
Solar startup Niko is building Mexico’s first virtual power plant
When Edoardo Dellepiane and Raffaele Sertorio founded Niko Energy in 2023, they saw ample opportunity in Mexico’s underdeveloped solar market. Despite the fact that many parts of the country are…
Climate change ignited LA’s wildfire risk — these startups want to extinguish it
Climate change increased the likelihood of the recent Southern California wildfires by 35%, according to a new study published by World Weather Attribution, a decade-old international group of climate scientists…
Helion raises $425M to help build a fusion reactor for Microsoft
Few fusion startups have been as closely watched as Helion. The 12-year-old company is backed by Sam Altman, rumored to be in talks with OpenAI, and has a deal to…
Lydian can make aviation fuel wherever there’s CO2 and electricity
Jet fuel is a modern wonder, allowing commercial airplanes to carry hundreds of passengers halfway around the world and military aircraft to regularly break the speed of sound. Yet jet…
How DeepSeek’s efficient AI could stall the nuclear renaissance
Chinese AI startup DeepSeek stunned the world with the release of its R1 model, which appears to perform nearly as well as leading models from Google and OpenAI, despite the…
Stargate will use solar and batteries to power $100B AI venture
The massive $100 billion Stargate joint venture will reportedly be powered, at least in part, by solar and batteries. The renewable power installations will be built by SoftBank-backed SB Energy,…