Public funding is meant to accelerate FOAK projects. In Europe, it often slows them down.  The Financial Times recently ran an article on the EU funding process for climate scaleups. Here is what you can expect if you plan to get public funds for your FOAK:  - 3000 hours of paperwork. - Around €85,000 cost per application - 20% chance of success and  - 6% chance of actually getting any money  For FOAK projects, this is an existential issue.  When you’re building the first commercial plant, your schedule is your financing.  Your suppliers lock in prices for 60–90 days.  Your EPC window keeps closing.  Your team burns payroll while waiting for a letter from Brussels.  And the moment your budget moves… you’re back to square one in the eligibility checklist.  This is why so many European hardware founders quietly do the thing that  Vianode  did: raise private capital first, start building, and treat grants as a maybe-later bonus. It shouldn’t be this way. Europe needs more FOAK factories — not more abandoned applications. But until funding matches FOAK reality (speed, clarity, and decision-making within the lifetime of a CAPEX quote), founders will keep choosing survival over subsidies.  If you’re a climate-tech founder navigating this maze — or deciding whether public money fits into your FOAK timeline — I'd be happy to compare notes!

This week’s news about Russian Porsche owners having their cars remotely deactivated stayed with me longer than I expected. One moment, you have a €150,000 sports car. The next, you have a very heavy, very pretty paperweight—because someone, somewhere, pressed a button. It is a neat illustration of the direction we’re drifting toward with “connected” and “software-defined” cars. In my recent article on robotaxis, I wrote that we’re stepping into a world where the economics make little sense, but the technological momentum is unstoppable. This Porsche episode is from the same story—just on the ownership side of the equation. We used to have a clear divide. You owned your car, phone, TV. The state owned (or at least regulated) the roads, the networks, the infrastructure. Now, the lines blur. You buy the hardware, but the “soul” of the product—the software, the control surface, the kill switch—belongs to someone else. And that someone often sits in a corporate office with little accountability and even less transparency. With cloud-based controls, you don’t really own your car anymore. Porsche just demonstrated that—even if you pay top dollar, your property rights are conditional on the goodwill of a faraway server. This isn’t just an annoyance. It chips away at the foundations of any healthy economy. Property rights were supposed to be simple: you buy a thing, it’s yours, and no algorithm can take it away. Combine this erosion with the “winner-takes-all” logic of modern tech platforms, and you get a world where even wealth doesn’t buy independence. You’re still tethered to a digital leash owned by a megacorp—and you hope the person holding the leash had a good morning and a stable internet connection. Robotaxis show us what happens when mobility becomes fully automated but economically fragile. The Porsche case shows us what happens when ownership becomes fully digital but legally fragile. Two sides of the same shift. And both raise the same question: What does “ownership” mean in an automated, connected world—when the “wires” run not to your garage, but to someone else’s cloud?

Europe wants to learn how to make batteries. What it gets instead is assembly lines. Last week, I stumbled on a report I somehow missed when it came out — the excellent T&E-commissioned study by Carbone4 on foreign battery investments in Europe. It’s one of those documents where you read ten pages, stare at the ceiling for a moment, and mutter: So it’s not just me seeing this. The picture they paint — and the picture in the infographic below — is surprisingly consistent with my own experience trying to localise wind turbine manufacturing years ago. Europe keeps talking about cooperation, know-how, and technology partnerships. What it is actually getting is… well, immovable property. We talk a lot about localisation. But what gets localised? In the ten years I’ve spent around manufacturing — wind turbines, CHP units, battery electrodes — I’ve met many people who say they localise technologies. But I don’t know anyone in Europe who has actually done it with a foreign partner in the full sense: design, IP, core processes, equipment, operations — the whole stack. Factories, yes — Europe has plenty of those. But true localisation? Real transfer of know-how? Tell me if you know. I don’t. And batteries are heading the same way. A growing chorus in Europe now argues that we should “cooperate more with China” because Europe “lacks battery know-how.” On LinkedIn, every announcement about CATL in Spain or Gotion in Slovenia is met with applause emojis and optimism about Europe “catching up.” I’m all for cooperation. But cooperation without technology transfer is not an industrial strategy - it’s outsourcing. And the report confirms that is exactly what’s happening. My wind turbine déjà vu When I was tasked with reaching >60% localisation of wind turbine manufacturing in Russia, I spoke to everyone who would care — Goldwind, MingYang, Siemens, GE, Vestas. At every interaction, I had a list of components for localisation, and I pushed for it. In my conversations with Chinese manufacturers, the main message was “We will ship you all the critical components, like generators. You can localise towers and some castings.” The negotiation basically ended there. Talking with European manufacturers was not much different. They were open to deeper localisation but on their terms. Location? They decide. Component scope? They decide. Skills transfer? Vague promises and PowerPoints. This is exactly what I now see playing out in Europe’s battery industry. The T&E / Carbone4 findings are blunt: battery technology transfer in Europe is simply not happening The report analysed the two major Chinese–EU partnerships — VW-Gotion and Stellantis–CATL—and the Gotion–Inobat JV. The conclusion is not ambiguous: there is no meaningful transfer of knowledge, IP, skills, or manufacturing expertise. Here are a few highlights. First, the ownership is lopsided. In any partnership, there are those who make decisions and those who follow. If you try to make anything in China, you will have to accept a smaller equity share and strict IP and know-how-sharing requirements. Gotion controls 80% of its JV with Inobat. CATL keeps all core technology in China. VW may own 26.47% of Gotion, but operationally, it's more of a customer than a partner. In none of the EU cases does the European partner hold decisive control over product, process, or equipment. Second, IP transfer provisions are either “limited” or non-existent. Stellantis’ €300M in Spanish state aid came with zero requirements for technology transfer. VW’s partnership secures battery supply, not battery know-how. Third, local supply chain development is not required. Plants rely on imported components — exactly what China wants: export of semi-knock-down kits assembled in Europe. Fourth, fuzzy provisions for local workforce development. To understand how this will play out in practice, look to existing Asian gigafactories in Hungary. CATL and Korean plants rely heavily on temporary migrant labour with high churn, and the top managerial positions are filled by expats from Korea and China, meaning the skills built do not stay in Europe. This is not cooperation. This is exploitation. Europe currently gives foreign manufacturers hundreds of millions in subsidies — €900M to CATL and LG alone — while attaching no requirements for technology transfer, local content, skills development, or even basic environmental safeguards. Europe has leverage — but is shy to use it Here’s the most astonishing part of this story. When I negotiated localisation in Russia, the only thing that helped me was the existence of strict local content rules. The market wasn’t large, but the rules were clear. Most players openly scoffed at the minuscule market size, saying it is not worth their time to even consider localisation there. Europe today is in a stronger position than Russia ever was: Europe is the world’s second-largest EV market. China is suffering from battery overcapacity. The US is largely closed to Chinese suppliers. Chinese companies need Europe. Yet European negotiators behave as if they were the weaker party. True, the EU doesn’t have any local content requirements, but their market size alone should be a big enough bargaining chip. Instead of demanding knowledge transfer, Europe funds knock-down assembly. Instead of making the market conditional — Europe hands out subsidies unconditionally. Instead of requiring local hiring — Europe receives temporary migrant workers with no long-term skills retention. On a side note, Northvolt's case is super interesting, as they also employed many migrant workers, who acquired critical skills, but were basically kicked out by the Swedish government after Northvolt’s collapse. That’s undoubtedly the best example of how to keep crucial, hard-to-develop skills in Europe. What should Europe do? The answers are not complicated. As the report puts it plainly, Europe risks becoming “an assembly plant, not a battery powerhouse.” The checklist Europe needs is something that has no doubt come about many times in the boardrooms and national assemblies: Require majority local ownership in JVs (>51%) Condition state aid on IP transfer and local content Demand training programmes and local workforce targets Use tariffs as leverage for onshoring Enforce grid-based CO₂ limits that favour local production Implement “Buy Europe” rules in procurement Define clearly what is “Made in EU” These measures are nice to have, but not critical. What is sorely lacking is an understanding that the world is changing, a strategic vision for one’s industry and some backbone in negotiations. These alone could score Europeans better deals. There is a caveat, however. Freedom and independence come at a price. You can’t get both technology and cheap batteries at the same time. The European car and battery industry is so squeezed that it values next-quarter earnings above long-term survival. So it sells itself on a low price, securing a battery supply in exchange for future technology independence. When we finally decided on a technological partner in wind turbine manufacturing, we went with a small Dutch startup, not GE or Goldwind, precisely because we would get the technology and know-how we needed. We knew our turbine would be more expensive. We knew we would make many mistakes as we learned to scale up turbine manufacturing. We knew that we would have to design and fund training programs for local workers (we even created a VR exam on generator assembly). Next time you hear about a “European–Asian partnership”… be wary, because: A factory is not a strategy. Assembly is not localisation. And a partnership without knowledge transfer is not a partnership — it is dependency. Europe still has a chance to avoid becoming the world’s green-tech workshop. But it needs industrial policy with teeth, and businesses willing to take a long-term view and make hard bets. Until then, every new battery “joint venture” should be read with caution.

This week started with a review of five pitch decks — from sustainable fishing to fashion, fuels, energy trading and carbon reporting: different industries, different stages, different teams. So, who actually has a chance to survive long enough to build a FOAK? I run them through my 4—step FOAK strategy assessment framework. It’s a process to force clarity on climate impact, market fit, FOAK delivery, and team readiness. It helps to turn scattered assumptions into an actual long-term strategy. Strategy is a living document. Revisit it while you build, challenge your old assumptions, and notice what you actually got right. Here’s the short FOAK strategy checklist I use: 1. Climate impact: Can you eliminate ≥500 Mt CO₂e/year at scale? Are there any rebound risks that your tech would actually do more harm than good? 2. Market: Is there a real market today, not in 10 years? What’s your value beyond CO₂ reduction? 3. FOAK delivery: Manufacturing feasibility, supply chain readiness, cash flow, financing and timeline. And what will you do post-FOAK? 4. Team: Founder–FOAK fit, leadership gaps, and a talent map for who you must hire to run FOAK. The exercise gives you two things every founder needs: - A clear view of your real position in the climate tech system — your impact, risks and capabilities. - A map for FOAK and beyond — milestones, bottlenecks, and the “known unknowns” you’ll meet while putting out fires on the way to your first plant. Once you know your limitations and your path, you can finally plan how to execute, finance and operate your FOAK, and don’t lose the forest for the trees. If you want to pressure-test your own FOAK strategy, I'd be happy to take a look!

Construction sites and factory floors are places I’m far more used to than a laboratory. But last week I was in the Netherlands, meeting a client and visiting two universities to see how their new chemical product is getting ready for its demo project. And I have to say: I haven’t yet seen this level of preparation — on both the R&D and project sides. Every assumption challenged, every risk logged, every experiment linked to a downstream engineering decision. It’s the sort of discipline that quietly tells you: this FOAK has a real chance. Sometimes I hear that you start planning your FOAK when you hire EPCs or sign for a plot of land. In reality, your FOAK begins in the lab — long before the first layout drawing. Science gives you the spark, the “what if.” But execution is what turns that spark into hardware, contracts, and something that runs at nameplate for more than a week. Last week’s trip made me quite confident in my client’s success. The science is solid. But more importantly, the execution mindset is already there. And that’s what scales.

A few weeks ago, I posted a clip from Total Recall where Arnold Schwarzenegger tears the robotic taxi driver out of his seat and takes over manually. For all the futuristic imagery, that scene captured something intimately familiar: you don’t trust a robot. This week, I read two Economist articles back-to-back—one on the US robotaxi sector, one on the Chinese one. And after going through both, one conclusion is impossible to ignore: robotaxi economics still don’t work. Not in the US. Not in China. But both countries push ahead anyway—just for very different reasons. Source: The Economist The US, where unit economics are a tragedy, but TAM slides look magnificent. Start with the US. Here, the unit economics are a tragedy, but the TAM slide looks magnificent. The Economist article on the US essentially boils down to three problems. First, the cars are too expensive. A full US-spec robotaxi stack (lidar–radar–cameras–compute) is a six-figure machine, however you turn it. And these vehicles depreciate fast. Second, the operating costs are comically high. Robotaxis require large teams to monitor fleets, endless software updates, high-bandwidth connections, map maintenance, remote “intervention” staff, and high insurance premiums. Robotaxi companies do replace drivers - with 300 software engineers and 24/7 remote support. Third, regulation keeps the fleets tiny. Robotaxis are allowed to roam only in designated parts of towns, if they are allowed at all. Small fleets won’t let you have economies of scale, which means costs are still high and startups are still unprofitable. Yet the US keeps pushing. Why? Because America still believes every mobility problem can be solved by a startup, a valuation model, and maybe a positive EBITDA slide. The tech optimism is deeply baked into the culture. After all, this is the country that turned coworking into a high-conviction asset class. China, where unit economics still don’t work but the system is trying to brute-force them into working. Now let’s move over 10,000 km west of San Francisco. In China, the robotaxi economics also don’t work, but the system is built to brute-force it until it does. The second Economist article is even more interesting, because despite the hype around China “pulling ahead,” the underlying economics are still shaky - China’s robotaxis lose money too. Even though Chinese robotaxis have one zero fewer on the price tag, per-kilometre costs are still higher than ride-hailing with human drivers. China has lower manufacturing costs and has deployed many more robotaxis, but it's still not enough to be profitable. So why does China look like it’s pulling ahead? Because China’s system solves the problem the opposite way around: if the cost curve doesn’t work, build the scale first and push the cost curve down later. This is the same logic behind EVs, solar, and batteries. Economics today matter less than strategic positioning tomorrow. Despite both countries losing money on robotaxis today, the probability of getting to profitability is much higher in China. First, the hardware is cheaper, and it is getting cheaper. China produces lidar, sensors, compute hardware, and EVs domestically at far lower cost. A US robotaxi is a science experiment on wheels. A Chinese robotaxi is an industrial product rolling off an existing EV supply chain. When your bill of materials is cheaper, your break-even point suddenly looks less like a fever dream. Second, Chinese cities welcome robotaxis and actively redesign infrastructure to support them, with the curious exception of Beijing, Shanghai and some other large cities. In the US every city requires separate approvals, hearings, pilot phases, and local negotiations. In China municipalities compete to be early adopters. Third, scale is a policy decision, not a market outcome. China can mandate large fleets, provide regulatory clarity and subsidise deployments. If robotaxis need 30–50k units on the road to hit favourable economics, China can make that happen. The US cannot—not without a decade of hearings and lawsuits. So why push so hard if the economics are broken? Because in both countries, non-economic drivers dominate. In the US founders need the “inevitable autonomous future” narrative to stay alive. Investors need one last big technological frontier. Companies like Tesla and Waymo need autonomy to anchor long-term valuations. In China robotaxis are part of the national industrial strategy. They support domestic supply chains for EVs, computing, and sensors. They help cities hit local digitalisation and emissions targets. The government wants to define global standards for autonomous mobility. The incentives are political, strategic, and reputational—not financial. A long drive to profitability Robotaxis today resemble green hydrogen was five years ago: lots of headlines, small deployments, great PowerPoints, and a cost curve that stubbornly refuses to bend. But while the US treats robotaxis like a startup race, China treats them like infrastructure. And that difference will define the next decade. The US will probably lead in core autonomy algorithms and chips. China will lead in deployment volume, cost reduction, and profitability. The first positive unit economics will appear in China, not in Silicon Valley, because ultimately, this is an industrial game. And in industrial games, China tends to play the long, patient, scale-first strategy—while the US plays the venture-funded, demo-first strategy. Robotaxis don’t make money today. Unlike hydrogen, there are no physics telling us that they won’t make money tomorrow. With enough scale and cheaper computing power, they will. What will it take? Two things. First, a ton of innovation aimed at improving the efficiency of algorithms and energy use. The hardware has to get cheaper, and it will. When cell-to-chassis finally comes about, that will be one sign. Second, it will need scale, and if anyone can force them to make money tomorrow, it’s the country that already forced EVs, solar panels, and battery factories onto workable cost curves. ---- Original articles, no paywall: https://economist.com/who-will-win-the-trillion-dollar-robotaxi-race?giftId=Y2Y5ZDg0MTQtZmFjZC00OGJhLTk3MDUtOTQ4YWIwYzkxM2I2&utm_campaign=gifted_article   https://economist.com/business/2025/11/26/why-china-is-pulling-ahead-in-the-robotaxi-race?giftId=NzBjYzI0NzMtM2FhOS00NDM4LWE1MDktZTQzZDdjM2ExZWY3&utm_campaign=gifted_article

If you have ever worked in a large multinational, you know the feeling: endless org charts, contradictory KPIs, processes that multiply like rabbits. And somehow everyone is both “responsible” and “not really responsible.” Now multiply that by ten, stitch together the cultures of a dozen legacy car brands, add a dash of crisis-era decision-making, and you get Stellantis - a Frankenstein monster of the automotive world. Not created by one mad CEO, but by years of mergers, restructurings, and “synergy roadmaps” that never quite materialised. And just like Mary Shelley’s creature, it wanders the landscape, unsure how to behave in a polite society. The car world increasingly resembles a polite society of electric vehicles with its own rules: long-term supply security, chemistry bets made years in advance, and a willingness to commit before you’re fully comfortable. Tesla set the fashion, Chinese OEMs showed how to do this properly. All over the world, respectable car OEMs struggle to keep up. Meanwhile, Stellantis, after taking a long, hard look at the mirror, decides that it doesn’t belong in this world, and cancelled several raw-material supply contracts. In battery materials. In 2025. In a world where EV supply chains are the hottest geopolitical topic after semiconductors. Mary Shelley’s monster never had the option to become human; the tragedy was baked in. Stellantis, on the other hand, does have a choice. It can still reinvent itself, commit to a messy and expensive transition, and finally align around a coherent EV strategy. Only if it could muster the courage… Yeah, sure. Imagine doing it from the inside of this monster, where KPI’s are tied to quarterly results, not strategic milestones 10-15 years away. Mega-corporations rarely die from a single dramatic mistake. They fade through a sequence of small decisions that felt “pragmatic” at the time. This one feels like another step down that lonely path of a monster, not fit for a polite society.

Nothing tests a founder’s sanity like having too many “very interested” customers. It’s like speed dating with homework. A few days ago, I spoke with an early-stage founder whose product was attracting a lot of interest. On paper, it looked like a dream: inbound requests from consumer electronics, defence, industrial automation, and even a few overseas corporates. In reality, it was a trap. The team had five people, no sales function, and most of their time was devoted to developing their product. They didn’t have the bandwidth, budget or hours in the day to seriously follow up with everyone. They had to choose. And that choice would likely determine whether they ever get to their FOAK. Founders with “multi-industry” products often treat this as an advantage: “If automotive doesn’t bite, maybe medical will. If medical is slow, maybe defence. There’s always another market.” But dig even a little deeper, and this advantage quickly turns into a liability. You lose focus, your pipeline gets cluttered, and you end up chasing conversations instead of deals. So what do you do? How do you choose where to focus when everyone seems interested? If I had to choose one guiding principle, it would be speed. The faster you get to a sale, the faster you move to your FOAK. The faster you move to FOAK, the faster you build credibility, reduce technical risk, and get to real revenue. People love referencing Amazon or OpenAI as excuses to “go slow” or “burn cash for years.” But these are statistical outliers with extraordinary (and frankly, situational) financing power. You are not Amazon, and I pray that you aren’t thinking of yourself as the next OpenAI (in terms of cash burn). Every extra year without revenue tests your investors’ patience and increases your financing risk. The planning fallacy always catches up. If you have a choice of markets, pick the one where sales cycles, certification, procurement and contracting move fastest, even if the TAM looks smaller on paper. Selling batteries for medical devices might get you cash flow in months. Selling the same chemistry into automotive could take 3 years to complete supplier qualification. Your bank account won’t wait that long. I always advise founders to choose speed over market size. A small, fast market beats a big, slow one every time. Curious about your experience: when you had to choose, did you go for the fastest path to revenue, or the biggest market?

Today I came across a curious piece titled “Micromobility Does Not Need Hypergrowth.” The author makes a simple point: not every industry is built for Silicon Valley–style blitzscaling. Some technologies grow slowly, linearly, and in close dialogue with infrastructure, regulation, and physical reality. Trying to force hypergrowth on them distorts incentives, misprices risk, and burns founders. Reading that, I couldn’t help thinking about FOAK climate hardware. Micromobility founders are told to “be the next Uber.” FOAK founders are told to “be the next Tesla.” Both are equally unrealistic. And yet the majority of the advice circulating online is written by people whose job is not to build bikes, cars, electrolyzers, batteries, or anything with a supply chain, but to deploy capital into stories that look like they could grow like software. That dissonance shows up everywhere in the FOAK fundraising journey. I see this clearly because I’ve lived on both sides: scaling wind, cathode materials, and doing early evaluation for battery cell manufacturing, while also spending a year listening to VCs, interviewing them, and trying to understand how they really think. The conclusion I reached is quite an uncomfortable one: VCs are the performers of the cleantech stage, excellent at attracting attention, less equipped for the trench work of scale-up. And that’s fine, as long as founders understand what game they’re playing. VCs Are Optimised for Speed. FOAK Is Optimised for Physics. The EnvoDrive article argues that micromobility collapsed under the illusion that every physical business must pursue hypergrowth. When the business is actually infrastructure-dependent and margin-sensitive, that mindset becomes toxic. FOAK companies face the same trap. Hardware does not obey software scaling curves. Building factories takes years, not sprints. Procurement cycles run on seasons and budgets, not growth hacks. Your next customer is not “the next million users,” but one B2B account that can take six months just to align internally. Trying to convince a VC that your FOAK will grow like SaaS is not just unrealistic - it can and will backfire. But there is a temptation to do just that, because VCs look for exponential scalability, and what grows better than SaaS? So how do you manage this temptation and get the VCs on board? Here is a 5-step framework for pitching FOAK to VCs I’ve developed, based on what I’ve learned about how VCs see FOAK projects. 1. You Must Show a 10x–100x Outcome VCs don’t get out of bed for businesses that might return 3x in 10 years. Their funds can’t survive that math. They need outliers. So when you pitch, TAM becomes theatre. You’re not asked to prove what’s achievable - you’re asked to prove that the market is big enough to absorb a unicorn-level outcome plausibly. FOAK founders often confuse this with a request for realism. It isn’t. It’s a request for a possibility. Meanwhile, the EnvoDrive article reminds us of what happens when you push physical businesses into growth trajectories that don’t fit their physics: you lose the plot. Overfunding creates pressure to scale prematurely, just like the micromobility bubble did. FOAK is no different. Hypergrowth expectations can suffocate a hardware business that is still debugging its procurement and cost curves. 2. VCs Want to See Your Technical Brilliance, Even Though Scaling Is Not Technical This is always the funniest part. VCs want deep tech, patents, PhDs, and simulations. Meanwhile, every founder who survived scale-up will tell you that FOAK success depends on: - supply chain discipline - vendor qualification - off-take negotiation construction management operational reliability …none of which show up in pitch decks. But again, VCs aren’t wrong. They’re optimised for early risk, not operational risk. So they select for genius, not operators. They assume someone else (corporates, later-stage investors, project financiers) will pick up the baton later. This is the same misalignment the EnvoDrive article points out: the investor ecosystem applies a software mindset to a hardware reality. 3. Show Modularity or a Path to Commercial Scale VCs love modularity because it's a clear path to scalability. But many cleantech systems are not naturally modular. Nuclear reactors, district heating, and chemical processes are usually optimised for scale, not Lego. There is no easy way around it. Show how 1 pilot becomes 10 pilots becomes 100 units (for more on that, see my article on choosing the right scale). If the underlying economics depend on going big, show the path to achieving the commercial scale you need. Show how fast you can go from equity finance to project finance - because that’s how non-modular technologies scale, and that shows how VC’s can exit. 4. FOAK Economics Are Not Unit Economics The EnvoDrive article argues that micromobility companies misled themselves by applying SaaS-style economics to a physical business with physical depreciation, physical maintenance, and physical wear. FOAK founders fall into the same trap. But the VC world wants to see improving unit economics. The thing is that your FOAK unit economics will be terrible, your NOAK economics may be good and your nth factory economics may be excellent. The job of the founder is to show the cost curve clearly: what improves, when, and why. VCs need to believe in the slide from “today’s ugly” to “tomorrow’s profitable.” You are not judged on current numbers, but on narrative + physics + learning curves. 5. Show FOMO. And an off-take. This is a classic fear vs. greed problem. No investors want to be first. Everyone wants to be second. Show who is already in your round, who is doing due diligence, who signed NDAs and who “can’t lead but would follow”. The biggest carrot would be a signed off-take, as it signals customer commitment. Why FOAK Founders Must Understand This Dynamic When you do FOAK projects, you face incredible complexity and have to operate with extremely limited time and energy. That’s why chasing the wrong investors and wrong metrics kills companies. Not everything needs to be pushed into hypergrowth. Not every market rewards speed. And not every FOAK project needs a VC investor. FOAK hardware is fundamentally a reliability business. It is measured in uptime, cost per unit, procurement lead times, supply chain risk, off-take security, and regulatory clearance. It rewards patience, discipline, and operational excellence, not blitzscaling. VCs, meanwhile, reward stories. There is no blame here. Only misalignment of risks.

Tesla is trying to rebuild its battery supply chain without Chinese materials, and do it fast. According to the latest reporting from Battery-Tech, Tesla is pushing Korean suppliers to ramp up silicon-rich anodes and other critical materials to replace China. Re-engineering a supply chain under normal conditions is hard. Doing it in one or two years is possible if you are willing to pay the price. I’ve been through this a few times — localising supply chains for wind turbines, cathode materials, and evaluating localisation options for battery cells. The reality is sobering: * Our locally built wind turbine ended up costing more than double what a comparable one costs in China. * For cathode materials, the delta was closer to 200×. * For other components, after months of market study and supplier mapping, we realised we only had a fighting chance if we built 20+ GWh of battery capacity from the start. Tesla is, of course, operating at a different scale. They can give suppliers better volume, certainty and payment terms — and therefore reach better prices. But even for Tesla, this shift will raise battery costs. But it will improve resilience. And resilience is exactly what is needed with the U.S. tariffs, China’s willingness to weaponise critical materials, and the very real prospect of a Taiwan crisis in the next two to three years. The “Taiwan factor” might explain Tesla’s aggressive timeline better than tariffs or trade frictions. Multiple analysts point out that the Chinese military will be capable of at least a blockade of Taiwan by 2027. The Chinese government has been very clear that it will not let the island remain independent indefinitely. Outside China, only Korea offers a complete, reliable battery materials ecosystem today. No surprise Tesla is pivoting in that direction. If you’re also rethinking your supply chain footprint and considering Korea as an alternative, I'd be happy to share what I’ve learned.

The French invented the word *bureaucracy*, so you’d expect that getting anything done here would involve a respectable amount of… well, bureaucracy. At least that’s what all my French friends told me before I moved. But today I received my micro-entrepreneur status — and the whole process was online. I never went to any préfecture, never had to translate a single document into French, and everything moved surprisingly smoothly. It took about two weeks end-to-end, most of it just waiting for INPI to process my file. Opening a business in Istanbul took less time, but it cost me ten times more. Maybe it’s a Parisian thing. Or maybe France is changing for the better. Either way: officially open for business in the EU! 🇪🇺🇫🇷

In the past few months, AI has turned from a digital disruption story into an energy story. The International Energy Agency  estimates  that global data-centre electricity consumption could double by 2030, reaching 945 TWh — roughly the annual electricity use of Japan. These expectations have been fueling an investment frenzy across the entire energy chain: from dull but indispensable transformers, to speculative fusion-energy startups that promise infinite clean power sometime between now and the Second Coming. In the meantime, the AI bubble keeps swelling. Sam Altman recently announced that over $1 trillion is needed to fund OpenAI’s next growth phase — a figure so large that it leaves one befuddled whether to marvel at the audacity of OpenAI, the stupidity of those who fund it or both. The financial engineering that underpins this boom would have made any old-school investor faint. Patrick Boyle’s recent  video  offers a good laugh (and mild horror), dissects this wrapping reality with elegance and wit.  When I was at the Valencia Digital Summit (VDS) in October, the same thesis echoed through every panel: AI will consume unimaginable amounts of power.  And while that’s a catchy headline, I kept hearing something else between the lines.  Put all the pieces together, and it looks like we’re heading for one of the biggest energy bubbles of this decade.  1. The math behind AI’s energy demand is flawed  Most projections are built by taking today’s data-centre efficiency and multiplying it by tomorrow’s AI compute demand. Simple enough — and simply wrong. Two major problems here.  First, the forecasts ignore technological progress. By the time new data centres come online, they will run on new architectures, chips, and software optimisations that radically cut power use. In Valencia alone, I met startups like  Multiverse Computing , developing quantum-inspired algorithms or new cooling systems that could reduce data-centre energy consumption by 30% to threefold. Second, phantom data centres. Many of the “planned” AI centres in the U.S. forecasts exist only on paper — speculative filings inflating future demand. The Financial Times recently described these  “phantom data centres”  and how they distort grid-planning models. Utilities are building capacity for loads that may never materialise. Add these two together, and the exponential demand curve starts looking less like a law of nature and more like a marketing deck.  2. The hysteria lifts all boats — even the leaky ones  Scepticism aside, there’s no denying the hype’s financial power. In a collective fit of FOMO, investors are throwing money at anything with “AI” or “energy” in the headline. Some bets make sense: transmission, transformers, grid-scale batteries. Others are misplaced at best. The most outrageous examples are Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), fusion and fuel cells. There are precisely three SMRs operating today — two in China, one in Russia — and none of them are genuinely modular or cheap. The Western SMR startups I know don’t plan commercial rollout before 2035, and that’s the optimistic timeline. Fusion, as always, is 20–30 years away — perpetually. Meanwhile, reality bites. The U.S. government just  signed an $80 billion deal  with the owners of Westinghouse to build conventional AP1000 reactors — new, but very much old-school nuclear. Even the usually optimistic  CTVC  newsletter now takes a noticeably sceptical tone on SMRs. And then there’s  Bloom Energy  — the fuel-cell company whose shares spike every time someone says “AI needs more power.” They recently issued $2.2 billion in convertible bonds, while executives reportedly sold their own stock amid the hype. That’s surely a great confidence-building signal.  3. When the tide goes out  Sooner or later, demand projections will deflate, and so will valuations. When that happens, we’ll see who’s been swimming without a balance sheet. The AI-energy bubble will burst, pulling down investors who chased the wildest promises: fusion startups with perpetual timelines, SMRs with nonexistent supply chains, and fuel-cell fantasies pitched as grid solutions.  What will remain is a more modest, realistic trajectory: Moderate growth in electricity demand from AI — real, but not exponential. Efficiency gains from better chips, algorithms, cooling and other technologies. Clean generation from renewables, batteries, and natural gas filling the gap. In other words, the future of AI power won’t be powered by magic or modular miracles. It will be powered by the same trio that’s quietly been doing the heavy lifting all along — wind, sun, and storage.