As celebrities come under fire for their frivolous, high-emissions private-jet habits, a group of companies, researchers, and engineers are dreaming up a world where jet-setting would come at a much lower carbon cost.

The global aviation industry is responsible for ~2% of all human-induced greenhouse-gas emissions annually, according to the IPCC.

US airlines aim to reduce their CO2 emissions by 50% in 2050 compared with 2005 levels, but unlike other forms of transportation, planes can’t rely on electrification alone. While there are startups developing batteries for planes, long flights will likely require a different solution.

• One answer is sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), a biofuel that’s created from plants or waste materials and performs similarly to today’s petroleum-based jet fuel while producing 50%–80% fewer carbon emissions over its lifecycle.

Big picture: Reaching net-zero emissions in aviation by 2050 would require continued fuel-efficiency improvements in planes as well as a much, much greater supply of SAFs, according to a July report from climate experts and industry leaders on reaching net-zero.

Global SAF production capacity would need to grow to at least 5x the size of the current pipeline by 2030. The production capacity would then need to increase even faster, by as much as 9x from 2030 to 2050, according to the report.

Keep reading our primer on the jet fuel of the future.—GD

Just as July plunged us Northern Hemispherians deeper into the summer heat, it also furthered the trend of declining venture investment.

Last month, global VCs invested $28 billion, per Crunchbase, down 56% year over year from $63 billion last July and a 34% drop from this June. It’s the lowest monthly total since November 2020.

Even so, plenty of startups managed to nab impressive funding rounds. In particular, many of July’s biggest rounds went to climate-tech startups, which could prove particularly resilient in the VC downturn.

• Northvolt, Europe’s top battery maker, raised $2.75 billion—the month’s most mega round. Check out our interview with a Northvolt VP about how the company plans to scale battery production.
• Xpansiv, a carbon-trading platform, raised $400 million in the biggest round of the quarter.
• Monolith, a clean hydrogen producer, was right behind it with a $300 million round.
• TAE Technologies, a nuclear-fusion startup, netted $250 billion.

Zoom out: As has been the case throughout the ongoing VC pullback, investment is declining across all deal stages, but late-stage investment is falling faster than early-stage companies. Put another way: The earlier the stage, the slower the decline.

Meanwhile, seed funding is actually up year over year, as was also the case across all of Q2. The category typically accounts for the smallest share of venture dollars—it made up less than 10% in July—which plays to its advantage in a moment when big, splashy investments are out.

Click here to read on-site.—DM

Even the influencers are being automated. Last week, we asked all of you to weigh in on whether you’d ever followed or engaged with a virtual influencer.

The answer? A resounding “Nope.” Just 11% of ETB readers said they’d engaged with or followed a virtual influencer. The remaining 89% said they never had.

Be that as it may…some of the most popular virtual influencers have tens of millions of followers across social platforms. The accounts experienced a boom time in 2020 during Covid lockdowns, per Bloomberg, commanding a greater share of the US’s multi-billion dollar influencer marketing industry.

• In the US, the most visible virtual influencer is Lil Miquela, which (who??) has worked with brands like Calvin Klein and Prada.

Zoom out: Rest of World recently reported that China’s virtual influencer industry is worth $16 billion—and uncovered just how much physical, human work goes into automating influencers. The digital industry relies on a web of real-world actors that specialize in everything from motion capture to voice-over.—DM

Stat: SoftBank’s Vision Fund lost $23.1 billion in Q2, per Reuters. And in Q1, the Vision Fund made just $600 million worth of new investments—down from $20.6 billion the year prior.

Quote: “The era where the world is at peace and it doesn’t matter who supplies our semiconductors is over.”—Kazumi Nishikawa, a director at Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, told the New York Times

Read: The internet of things, the internet of plants, and now…the internet of cows.

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• President Biden signed the CHIPS act into law, officially pumping $50+ billion in subsidies into the US semiconductor industry and hundreds of billions into other science and tech initiatives. Is this…industrial policy?
• Qualcomm will buy another $4.2 billion worth of chips from GlobalFoundries’s New York manufacturing plant. GlobalFoundries will now supply $7.4 billion worth of chips to Qualcomm through 2028, to be used in everything from 5G to IoT applications.
• Google has filed two new patent lawsuits against Sonos, the latest instance of the two companies suing each other.
• Tesla collects a lot of data on car owners.
• Meta released a conversational AI system called BlenderBot, which “can converse on nearly any topic.” Channel your memories of SmarterChild and give it a whirl here.

Snap poll: Did you ever message SmarterChild back in the golden days of AIM?

Yes
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Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions:

• Inside one battery company’s plan to put the supply chain first
• This startup wants to replace diesel generators with tiny wind turbines
• Alexa’s next trick? Figuring stuff out itself