Akash Pasricha

At TechEnergy Ventures our team has dedicated years to understanding the potential of the Hydrogen opportunity, its decarbonization potential and the most attractive technology routes. We remain bullish on H2 as an Industrial feedstock and believe that the right Turqouise technology can deliver a decarbonization route without green premium leveraging existing assets and infrastructure. Check out our latest article written with Andrea Siciliani where we have consolidated our thinking. https://lnkd.in/dAvB6sXt Get in touch if you are interested in learning more!

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Brookfield’s CEO publicly announces intent to acquire public companies in renewable power generation. Following TPG Rise's acquisition of Altus Power, Inc., it signals a clear trend: leading private equity firms will actively pursue undervalued publicly traded energy transition assets over the next year or so. While policy headlines dominate the conversation, the smart money focuses on fundamentals. Renewables win on economics alone - they're cost-competitive and serve growing demand drivers from electrification to AI infrastructure. The public market has overcorrected and market volatility creates headlines, but the underlying value proposition remains unchanged. #energytransition #solar #renewables

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Big milestone for Doppler Finance: Doppler just raised a $3M seed round led by Reforge, with participation from DCG, Maven 11, HashKey Capital, GSR, CMCC Global and others. Their goal? Unlock institutional-grade yield infrastructure on the XRP Ledger, something that’s been missing since day one. Here’s the opportunity: -> XRP’s ~$200B market cap has less than 0.1% in DeFi. -> Ethereum, by comparison, has ~20% of its market cap active on-chain. That’s hundreds of billions in idle XRP and Doppler is building the rails to activate it. With custody integrations (Fireblocks, Copper, Bitgo), verifiable proof-of-reserves, and plug-and-play APIs for wallets/custodians, they’re building for regulated capital but with open access. Their $500M+ capital pipeline speaks volumes. This is a major unlock for #XRPFi and one of the most promising attempts to bridge compliant yield infra with an underserved but globally significant asset. Excited to see how this one plays out.

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Following on from Packy McCormick's post on the growth in VC-backed exit values over the last 20 years, we did our own deep dive into the Pitchbook data. We looked at US VC-backed exits from 2005-2024 (with an exit value of at least $10k) and broke things down into five year periods. Some key takeaways: * Nobody is getting rich from the median exit. For the whole 20-year period, the median exit size was just $85m. It has been steadily growing - from $50m in 2005-09 to $113m in 2020-24 - but nobody is investing in VC for these sort of outcomes. * The value of a top 10% exit grew from $400m in 2005-09 to $1.6bn in 2020-24. This is a 59% compound growth rate over each of the four periods. * The value of the 99th percentile exit, the mythical top 1%, grew even faster - from $1.4bn in 2005-09 to $10.2bn in the most recent five-year period. This represents a 93% compound growth rate over each period. If this trend continues, then we should expect to see the top 1% exit increase to nearly $20bn over the next five years and nearly $40bn in 2030-34. We have always said that you should compare fund sizes today to the expected exit sizes in 10 years' time. If we do think the top 1% exit will be $40bn+ when today's funds are maturing (which doesn't strike me as crazy), then how does that impact the debate on what an appropriate fund size should be for a 2025 vintage fund?

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Early-stage valuations are like mirages in the desert. They look exciting, until you touch them. Every cycle, we see the same story: > Founders chasing a headline valuation. > Investors chasing mark-ups on paper. > Capital chasing momentum, not fundamentals. And every cycle ends the same way: with wealth destroyed, not created. Because a valuation is not a business. Market cap is perception. Cash flow is reality. As investors, the real questions are: - Is the business model sustainable in a downturn? - Do unit economics make sense today, not just in the “future at scale”? - Can the leadership execute with discipline, not just vision? - Is there a path to revenue that isn’t dependent on the next round? Startups don’t fail because the idea is weak. They fail because hype outpaces discipline. At Prudent Investment Managers, we’ve seen this across public and private markets: The entrepreneurs who build conviction-driven,  operationally sound businesses may look slower in year one,  but they outlast the trend-chasers in year ten. Preserve before you grow. Because the investor who preserves capital in the early stage is the only one left to multiply it in the later stage.

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AI isn’t replacing people in venture capital. It’s redefining how they create value. The BIP Ventures team is building and using proprietary in-house AI technologies to see what’s happening now and anticipate what comes next. By integrating AI agents across our platform, we’ve improved the efficiency of our portfolio assessments, freeing our team to spend more time with founders. Efficiency is a small part of the story. The real impact is sharper, faster, more forward-looking decisions. AI reveals signals in customer feedback, pipeline health, and market traction that would otherwise take months to surface. Combined with the expertise of our Performance Engineering team, those deep-data insights help secure better outcomes. Check out my latest Substack for a look at how the firm is building, embedding, and benefiting from AI 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eWYtRH7N #AI #VentureCapital #VC #Data

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Kalshi has raised $𝟯𝟬𝟬 𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻 at a $𝟱 𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 The prediction market has expanded access to users in more than 𝟭𝟰𝟬 countries Kalshi projects $𝟱𝟬 𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻 in annualized trading volume this year, up from $𝟯𝟬𝟬 𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻 last year, and now holds more than 𝟲𝟬% of global market share The funding round was led by major investors including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Paradigm, CapitalG, and Coinbase Ventures. Over the past 6 months Sports markets have been dominant, with a 80-85% market share. 🧠 𝗤𝘂𝗶𝗰𝗸 𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲𝘀 (1) 𝗞𝗮𝗹𝘀𝗵𝗶'𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗻𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘂𝗺𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝘂𝗻𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲𝗹𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲 𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗹𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹 when Polymarket officially launches in the US. That being said, they have so far moved faster than the onchain prediction market. (2) 𝗜𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗖𝗼𝗶𝗻𝗯𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝗩𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝗳𝗮𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴. Kalshi are constantly flirting with 'going onchain'. They have already offered grants to Base & Solana based builders to expand their ecosystem. Reading the tea leaves, it's a matter of when, not if, Kalshi goes fully onchain. (3) 𝗞𝗮𝗹𝘀𝗵𝗶'𝘀 𝗹𝗲𝗴𝗮𝗹 𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗹𝘀 𝗺𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗯𝗲 𝗵𝘂𝗴𝗲. They are constantly fighting, suing and being sued by states in the US. Expanding to 140 countries, is going to open 140 cans of worms. It will be interesting to see how many countries of those 140, geolock Kalshi over the next 6 months.

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Another report on next generation energy costs can help us draw some important conclusions.  This chart is from Lazard, a highly respected advisory on energy markets. Further validating the chart that was presented by NextEra Energy Resources (see our recent post on this topic: https://lnkd.in/gaTsfSVq), the Lazard report shows that the lowest cost for new energy deployments are utility-scale solar, utility-scale onshore wind, natural gas and geothermal. Nascent sources such as small nuclear reactors have yet to make it onto the chart. Apart from natural gas, all of these energy sources have a very low variable cost as they effectively don’t consume fuel. Meanwhile, fixed costs will continue to go down with increased manufacturing volume — and in the case of geothermal, the application of drilling and fracking technology together with skilled labor from the natural gas industry will help lower costs. (Just take a look at Fervo Energy's leadership team to see the labor shift from natural gas to geothermal energy.) All of these cost trends will benefit from increased volumes and high growth markets such as supplying energy to data centers. Our conclusion is that we should allow the market to choose technology winners. For example, it makes more financial sense to build utility-scale solar instead of rooftop solar. As the chart from Lazard shows, utility-scale solar is now one of the cheapest forms of electricity to generate, at $.029-$.092/kWh. In comparison, rooftop solar costs 3-4 times more, at $.12-$.28/kWh. We should also look for ways to drive down the cost of storage, whether batteries or other innovations. Incentives might have a role to play, but ultimately, we should be supporting market structures that drive down the cost of energy. Enabling an electricity market that is competitive and allows for all energy sources to be treated like commodities will favor lower-cost energy sources. If the current trends hold true, this competition will favor energy sources that are not dependent on the extraction of fuels. These sources will be both abundant and have the lowest variable costs in the future. 📚 Background reading: • Lazard's full report: https://lnkd.in/gvsNHTiJ • Our recent post about NextEra Energy: https://lnkd.in/gaTsfSVq • Fervo's team: https://lnkd.in/ghA8hY9w

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