📝 VC Memos (Week of Jun 26- Jul 2)

"There are many in the production and content creation community who see technology, especially AI, as an existential threat to their business. HHP believes the opposite to be true: that by engaging and equipping the very best storytellers in the world with the right technologies and platforms, they can unleash a renaissance of creativity, and bring creative storytelling to bear in profound and important ways."

"By 2050, most of our energy will be generated by solar photovoltaics but during the wrong time for it to be valuable locally—in the middle of the day. Aquila aims to transport the energy from the place of generation (at midday in the Northern Territory) across the globe to somewhere else where it is highly valued (like at dinner time in Los Angeles)."

"EV sales are anticipated to reach 10x those in 2020 by 2030…

Sicona’s technology improves the overall performance of lithium-ion batteries through the optimisation of anode chemistry. This significantly enhances battery energy storage capacity by a margin of 20-50% which translates directly to a greater travel range between charges."

"Typeface seamlessly integrates into existing enterprise workflows and creates dedicated AI models for each customer, which enables them to tailor AI-generated multimodal content for different personas and audience segments without concerns about data leakage. With Typeface, businesses can ultimately drive 10x more personalized content for brands, increasing engagement and maximizing content marketing performance."

"Runway also services a large addressable market that will only expand as Runway’s products get better… Given the large percentage of individual creators, the company has mostly attracted “prosumers” so far, but we are beginning to see enterprise traction and that is an area we are super excited about.

“With the migration to the cloud, data consumption and operationalization has exploded along with the proliferation of purpose-built data stores for differing workloads. Statistica estimated that in 2022 alone, 97 zettabytes of data were created, and that figure is expected to grow 87% to 181 zettabytes by 2025.”

“The world's data volume continues to grow exponentially, tripling from 2020 to 2025 to 175 Zettabytes. The migration of this data is well underway, with 60% of corporate data already sitting in the cloud. While data has become a core asset for nearly all businesses and will become even more valuable with the rapid rise of AI, the associated risk of exposure and compliance mismanagement will continue to compound at a similar (if not greater) pace.”

“Memphis is rapidly becoming the platform of choice for companies to either replace or augment their existing streaming platforms. The reason is because of the thoughtful design of Memphis. It literally takes minutes to set up as it’s natively built upon Kubernetes. One customer even said: “What used to take three months in Kafka takes three minutes with Memphis. And with 90% fewer costs in the process.”

“Since its commercial launch in November 2022, Baskit has experienced remarkable growth, boasting month-on-month revenue growth rates exceeding 70%. This rapid expansion reflects the market's pressing need to fortify the operations of distributors and wholesalers, who face mounting competitive pressures and financial challenges in the post-Covid landscape.”

“…western civilization has a productivity problem—and a stubborn one at that. From 2011 to 2019, for example, the rate of growth in output fell, particularly in mature economies. And after a brief pandemic-related spike, that trend has continued, with GDP per hour worked expected to contract in both the euro zone and the U.S. yet again this year.”