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Good Morning! Welcome to our 32+ new readers.
Three time saving resources for you this week:
1) How to set up your AI personal assistant in under 10 minutes using Claude routines
2) Trump’s visit to China and what 10 ClimateTech startups stand to benefit
3) 30+ new deals, events and links
Enjoy,
Ollie
📡 WEEKLY RESOURCE
Creating a daily personal assistant in 15 mins for less than a $ (+ 21 Other Claude Skills)
20 mins
Time to implement
Hour
Time saved p/w
Easy
Difficulty
Every morning starts the same way. Open the inbox, scroll back through last night's emails, cross-reference the calendar, try to remember what got left half-finished yesterday, then do a quick LinkedIn check on whoever is on the 10am. Twenty to thirty minutes gone before any actual work happens.c
The tools to fix this have existed for a while BUT it has been complex. Calendar APIs, email APIs, LLMs that can summarise and prioritise. But the wiring has always been the painful part.
That changed quietly when Claude released ‘Routines’. Scheduled, cloud-hosted, MCP-aware. The whole "personal chief of staff" idea suddenly costs cents to run and takes ten minutes to set up.
🧭 DEEP DIVE
5 startups who might benefit from Trump’s visit to China
TL;DR
Trump landed in Beijing yesterday for the first US presidential state visit to China since 2017, with critical minerals, semiconductors, Iran, and Taiwan on the agenda. Western supply chains across defence, clean energy, and advanced manufacturing run on minerals they don't control, and Beijing has spent the last 13 months proving it. Several start-ups stand to benefit regardless of the outcome of the summit.
The Challenge
The energy transition is a metals transition. Western economies depend on rare earth permanent magnets they cannot make at scale. Wind Turbines (Or “Windmills” in the current governments rhetoric), electric vehicles, and industry all rely on these, and China processes 91% of global rare earth refining capacity.
China's April 2025 export controls turned that dependency into leverage. China placed export restrictions on seven heavy rare earths and permanent magnets which triggered persistent shortages and pushed prices to multi-year highs, with downstream effects rippling through US and European automotive and defence supply chains.
Washington are expected to head into the summit looking for licences for US commercial buyers to access Chinese rare earths. Analysts expect the most likely outcome is China agreeing to ship more rare earths again, in exchange for US concessions elsewhere. That helps in the short term (shipments are still about half what they were before April 2025), but China still decides who gets what and when.
That means whatever happens at the summit, demand for Western mine-to-magnet capacity keeps climbing. A diplomatic thaw lowers prices in the short term but doesn't reduce the strategic case for resilient, affordable, domestic capacity. A breakdown accelerates it. The companies positioned to benefit are the ones that:
A) Own meaningful steps of the value chain
B) Have qualified into OEM supply chains
C) Have already raised the capital to scale, with a path to sizeable domestic volumes inside 24 months
Solutions
Building more resilient, more sustainable and more affordable Western rare earth supply chains can come from four levers:
1) Increase new resource discoveries in US-friendly jurisdictions (AI exploration).Startups like KoBold Metals are using machine learning to identify deposits faster. But mines take years to build, and China has a 30-year head start.
2) Increase materials recovered from current assets or tailings. The best source of metals is often that already dug out of the ground. Orivium extracts copper from mining waste using low-energy methods, while Amermin recycles critical minerals from drilling waste. This approach can sidestep permitting delays and reduces environmental impact.
3) Improve recycling rates from end-of-life products. Urban mining, recovering metals from electronics, batteries, and industrial equipment, offers high-grade feedstock without new extraction. Companies are building capacity to reclaim rare earths from discarded magnets and EV batteries.
4) Increase trade agreements/relationships with friendly jurisdictions with their own resources. The US and EU formalised this with a critical minerals coordination agreement signed 24 April 2026, including price floors, subsidy alignment, and trade measures. Trump's rare earth partnership discussions with Brazil's Lula this week follow the same playbook.
Who is building & could stand to benefit?
Check out another 100+ MiningTech startups to watch out for
Still to prove?
Every tonne of rare earth oxide has a natural capital footprint, and the West is running out of low-impact options. China's processing dominance was built on environmental costs it externalised for 30 years. Western projects can't make the same trade. That means slower permitting, smaller resource pulls, and higher costs per tonne. Sweden's LKAB rare earth projects already face indigenous land-rights challenges, and Brazil's Supreme Federal Court is reviewing the Serra Verde sale over sovereignty concerns
Waste recovery and recycling need to scale fast enough to matter. Extracting metals from tailings and end-of-life products offers the most sustainable path and avoids new mining entirely, but the infrastructure to do this at required volumes is still being built. Deployment speed is the critical variable.
Processing technologies are equally concentrated but often overlooked. Decades of Chinese dominance hollowed out Western expertise in solvent extraction, separation, and metallisation. Many North American projects still buy processing equipment from China, or send it there to be processed, and qualified chemical engineers for rare earth refining are scarce. Near-shoring also means development of startups for an efficient mid/down stream.
Deeper Dive
Check out this excellent deep-dive into the other key topics up for negotiation
Great visuals on metals recycling
🛗 FOR YOUR LIFT CONVERSATIONS
🛗 Links
Energy & Minerals
⚡ Trump and Lula forge rare earth partnership to counter China: US President Donald Trump and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva are collaborating on critical mineral supply chains as Washington races to reduce dependence on Chinese rare earth exports. Brazil's lower house backed a critical minerals bill on May 8 as the two leaders met. Link
🌐 Geothermal developer Fervo prices IPO at $27, raises $1.89 billion: Houston-based Fervo Energy priced its IPO above the target range, selling 70 million shares and demonstrating surging investor appetite for clean baseload power amid the AI data centre boom and Iran war energy shock. Link
🔌 Former Tesla exec Drew Baglino launches heat pump startup: Drew Baglino, who led Tesla's battery and drive systems before a brief stint at Heron Power, has founded a new venture focused on residential and commercial heat pump technology, betting on building electrification as a growth market despite federal policy headwinds. Link
🚛 Battery electric trucks go operational in Australia with green hydrogen charging: Centurion completed its electric truck fleet rollout with charging infrastructure powered by renewable energy, marking a milestone in freight decarbonisation. The project demonstrates that "with the right partnerships and investment, sustainable freight solutions are achievable today." Link
Land
🌾 India books phosphate fertiliser at 40% above pre-war prices: Indian state buyers contracted phosphate fertiliser at roughly $667.50 per tonne including freight, 39% higher than rates seen before the Iran war began, as the conflict disrupts global ammonia and sulphur supply chains. The total volume contracted was 12% higher than the previous tender. Link
🧬 Resurrect Bio expands Series A to $10.3 million for plant defence tech: The agri-biotech startup, which helps plants activate their own immune systems against pests and disease, closed an expanded Series A to scale its platform, positioning itself as a biological alternative to chemical crop protection at a time when input costs are soaring. Link
🌍 Global regen ag frameworks still need local context, says SAI: The Sustainable Agriculture Initiative platform argues that regenerative agriculture's slow adoption stems partly from "the absence of a unified definition", and that global frameworks must be adapted to local soil types, climates, and farming systems to drive meaningful scale. Link
Water
💧 Texas power plants consumed 31% of electricity-related water for just 12% of generation: New analysis reveals coal plants in Texas used nearly a third of the state's electricity-related water consumption despite supplying only 12% of power, while renewables (30% of generation) use minimal water. The findings come as the state faces worsening drought conditions. Link
🌊 Wave-powered AI compute startup faces uphill battle against physics: Panthalassa's proposal to power floating data centres with wave energy confronts a graveyard of failed wave-energy ventures. Pelamis, Aquamarine Power's Oyster, and Ocean Power Technologies all collapsed after decades of trying. The ocean is not a server rack, and wave energy has never scaled commercially. Link
Atmosphere
💨 EU to tighten carbon credit rules in emissions system overhaul: Brussels is moving to strengthen verification and quality standards for carbon credits within its emissions trading system, responding to concerns about offset integrity that have plagued voluntary carbon markets. The regulatory tightening comes as corporate buyers demand higher-quality credits. Link
🏭 Germany commits €1 billion to electric truck charging infrastructure: Federal Transport Minister Patrick Schnieder announced the funding programme to accelerate charging network expansion for heavy-duty freight, helping logistics companies' switch to battery-electric commercial vehicles. The investment comes as Europe races to decarbonise road freight. Link
💰 Deals & Fundraises
🇬🇧 Nyobolt, a Cambridge, United Kingdom-based Fast-charging battery technology for autonomous robots and mobile fleets, raised $60m in Series B funding.
🇬🇧 Resurrect Bio, a Norwich, United Kingdom-based Restoring crops' natural immune systems against disease, raised $10.3m in Series A funding from Corteva Catalyst, Calculus Capital, Pymwymic, Future Planet Capital, SynBioVen, AgFunder.
🇬🇧 Meatly, a United Kingdom-based Cultivated meat production using animal cell culture technology, raised £10.4m in Series A funding from Oyster Bay Venture Capital, Clean Growth Fund.
Project Finance / Debt
🇦🇺 Arafura Rare Earths, a Australia-based Rare earths mining project developer, raised$200m in PF Debt funding from National Reconstruction Fund Corporation.
🇪🇬 SAF Fly Egypt, a Cairo, Egypt-based Sustainable aviation fuel production facility, raised$143m in PF Debt funding.
🇬🇭 Heath Goldfields, a Ghana-based Gold mining operations at Bogoso-Prestea, raised$65m in PF Debt funding from Trafigura Pte Ltd, arranged by Verdant IMAP.
Exits
🔋 Envision AESC, a Japan-based EV battery manufacturing and energy storage systems, went public by GIC (existing backer) at an implied valuation of $2b.
🚗 Monarch Tractor, a Livermore, CA-based Autonomous electric tractors for agriculture, acquired by Caterpillar.
🧱 USA Rare Earth, a Oklahoma, USA-based Acquiring Brazil rare earth producer Serra Verde for supply chain security, acquired by USA Rare Earth at an implied valuation of $2.8b.
Funds
A* Capital, a San Francisco, CA-based Early-stage venture fund across AI, fintech, healthcare, closed $450m with support from Carnegie Mellon University, nonprofits, foundations, endowments.
📅 Events
🇬🇧 14th World Conference on Climate Change: Verified via the official site, which states: "13th World Conference on Climate Change … April 14,15, 2025, Paris, France. (May 14-15)
🇮🇹 Outdoor Impact Summit 2026: Connects outdoor and sports industry to drive sustainability initiatives, reduce environmental footprints, and engage youth. (May 14)
🇪🇸 Global Water Summit 2026: While an international event, the 2025 summit has a North America focus segment. (May 18-20)
🇬🇧 ICWMET 2026, 20th International Conference on Waste Management and Environmental Technology: One-day academic conference exploring advances in waste-to-energy, hazardous waste management, and environmental monitoring technologies to support policy design for sustainable waste management in China. (May 18-19)
🇸🇬 Ecosperity Week 2026: Four-day multi-stakeholder platform under Temasek themed "Asia's Race toward 2030: All Systems Go." Ecosperity Week features cross-disciplinary panels on systems-level decarbonisation,encompassing cleantech, nature-based solutions, sustainable finance, and green policy. (May 18-21)
🇮🇹 Waste Management Europe 2026 (WME 2026, successor to 2025 edition): Expo and conference showcasing waste reduction innovations, recycling technologies, and circular economy solutions for European municipalities. (May 19-21)
🇺🇸 2026 ReFED Food Waste Solutions Summit: ReFED's flagship event, the premier food waste conference of the year. (May 19-21)
🇺🇸 Carbon Unbound East Coast 2026: A leading carbon dioxide removal (CDR) leadership summit drawing 400+ business leaders, investors, and policymakers ([Carbon Unbound 2025. (May 19-20)
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📩 Written by Ollie. Feel free to send us deals, announcements, or anything else using the link below or via LinkedIn.
