Contrary Research Rundown #8
The Rise of Climate Tech & Sustainability
Research Rundown
As the progress in building technology gets faster, and faster, every industry is experiencing change. This week, we had the chance to go deep into one industry that is changing rapidly to keep up with all this technological progress. After we published our deep dive on The Evolution of DevOps, we had the chance to go deep on companies like Hugging Face (and look for Snyk later today), as well as sharing the best resources we've seen exploring the DevOps space. While the world of DevOps is still in the early days, the trend is well on its way.
A newer trend that has just started to pick up new steam over the last few years is in climate tech. This week we're releasing five new memos covering companies across recycling, carbon accounting, and agriculture as we explore the ways different companies are tackling this new trend of infusing sustainability into everything we do. Stay tuned this week for more resources on different companies and approaches that are attempting to tackle the massive challenges inherent in climate change. For now, check out our newest memos below!
Imperfect Foods: Provides grocery delivery service rescuing and redistributing food across multiple grocery categories – including produce, shelf-stable goods, dairy, meat and seafood. Read more here.
Bowery Farming: Vertical farming company growing produce in controlled indoor environments using autonomous hydroponic farms for the cultivation of leafy greens. Read more here.
Arcadia: Climate software and data platform that specializes in decarbonizing the electric grid. The company attempts to resolve energy management challenges through vertical payment and integration platforms. Read more here.
AMP Robotics: Robotics, AI and infrastructure company for the waste and recycling industry. AMP Robotics has developed an artificial intelligence-based waste sorting robot, and is focused on building efficiency in the recycling world. Read more here.
Watershed: Software platform aiming to help companies decarbonize their operations. The company provides both a carbon accounting platform for customers and a carbon offset marketplace. Read more here.
The team at Battery Ventures released their 2022 State of the Open Cloud. The report highlights key insights from the private software market and a playbook for how founders/CEOs can manage costs during this economic slowdown.
OpenAI introduced Converge, an OpenAI Startup Fund offering $1M investments and advice to help AI-powered startups. Given the rate of change, its clear startups are having a meaningful impact in the process of AI products.
Cohere AI launched Sandbox, an open-source library to help developers experiment with language AI. Jay Alammar at Cohere also shared a Github version.
Checkout occupies the top spot as Europe's most valuable startup post-Klarna's valuation slump. The CEO of Checkout sat down for an interview to talk about the company's story and progress.
Madison Hawkinson, at Costanoa Ventures, wrote an insightful analysis of the Data Advantage in the Foundation Models Era. Historically, data-intensive machine learning has generated a significant moat. However, in the post-foundation model era, companies can outsource steps of the pyramid to new startups. This will enable some startups to focus on the application layer. Read the full analysis here and her thread on foundational models.
One such company leveraging models in an application layer is RunwayML. Sar Haribhakti sat down with the CEO of Runway to discuss how the rise of generative AI will be comparable to the rise of CGI in the early 90s.
Nandu Anilal wrote a piece on the Evolution of Infrastructure Markets and what it means for cloud computing in the future.
Brex co-founder, Henrique Dubugras, details decisions behind pivots, layoffs, and going remote in a discussion with TechCrunch.
This week included several sizable layoffs from tech companies. Stripe laid off 14% of its workforce. The cycle continues as Chime laid off 12% of their workforce, Opendoor 18%, and Lyft 13%. Gergely Orosz continues to post updates about all the mass layoffs happening this week.
Contrary Research Fellowship
At Contrary Research our vision is to cover hundreds of companies. We can't do it alone, nor would we want to. We focus on bringing together a variety of different perspectives.
That's why we're opening applications for our Research Fellowship. In the past we've worked with software engineers, product managers, consultants, and more. If you're interested in researching and writing about tech companies, apply here!