E543 | EUVC Summit 2025 | Hampus Jakobsson, Pale Blue Dot: Climate Tech in a Trump Era

0:00As the U.S. doubles down on fossil fuels and rolls back climate policies, the fight for the future of climate tech is on. I would say a majority of the companies today being funded in what we all call climate tech or called climate tech years ago has like to more than 80 % degree a business goal, which is not a climate goal when they started the company. Can Europe step up or will it be left reacting to a Trump-driven energy agenda? Enter Hampus Jakobsen, co-founder of Pale Blue Dot, a leading climate tech VC investing in the startups that will define the next decade. A serial founder turned investor, he's on the front lines of Europe's push to lead in climate innovation.

0:40With capital, policy, and geopolitics in flux, the stakes couldn't be higher. Will climate tech thrive or struggle to survive? I love it that I got to talk about this orange clown, which is a topic that I blocked from Twitter and other forums to make sure that my mental health stays fairly well. So then when these people are like, do you want to talk about him? I had to Google and figure out who he is and why he's such a bad thing for the planet. I'm kidding. Now, I think that the thing is we all know about what Trump is now redefining climate, and we should dig more oil and all the things like that.

1:13But we also know that Europe has pulled back a lot of the regulation the last six months, that I think some people are saying Europe is a leader of regulation. Now, apparently not. And I'm going to talk a bit more about that. But the thing is, I'm actually trying to avoid a bit of talking about Trump. Because I think, I don't know about you, Phil, but I'm a pre-seed, seed investor. I feel like when you're investing a startup, you're kind of like trying to throw a rock into space and you just hope to get it outside the Earth's gravity field and far away enough. And of course the founders that does most of the work, but hey, everywhere in the room, we're trying, we're giving them some of the velocity to get out.

1:47But the thing which I think is fascinating about this is the fact that, like some of you here, that we've talked for many years about climate investing, some of you would ask, if you're trying to figure out gravity, why would you support a pole vaulter on Jupiter when you can do it with an AI, also known as the moon, where the gravity is just lower, just raise bigger rounds and bigger exits, right? And I think one of the reasons for me is when we started fundraising this, we had this insane experience in 2019. So 2019, we go out and talk to LPs about raising Pebble Dot. And essentially, the LP community is split into essentially three halves.

2:26We have the third part, which says, I'm not sure that climate change is real. They came from one part of the world, a lot of them. And we had another group who said, yes, absolutely. I mean, we believe in climate change, but I'm not sure it's going to give essential good returns, right? And we had a third part who said, take my money. And it was very interesting to see it and why the people who backed us back in 2019, 2020, why they did it. And they did it for the same reason that we started the fund, and that is that we believe believe in expected value, I think as most of us do. The thing with expected value is its probability multiplied by outcome.

3:04And the thing about climate change is I don't know how many of you skeptics are left here, but it feels like the probabilities are going up quite drastically, and we're sensing it. I mean, I was in London, and I love biking in London. I was in London Monday and biked the stuff. I don't know how many of you were hit by the crazy rain. It was one of those things where my weather app said, no rain, and then it came. And I'm not saying, oh, that rain was climate change. But I mean, I was also in Valencia, November, for the impact week. Yeah, that was climate change for real. So the probability is going up.

3:35But also, as we see, the outcomes are getting up quite a lot. So it's really strange as investors that we're saying, I wonder if there are returns in climate. But I also get it. Because as much as I want to avoid talking about Trump, I will talk about him. But I will talk about the other thing that actually messed up climate tech investing quite a lot. And the thing that messed it up was the fact that there was, I don't know how many of you experienced this like balloon of the market in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, when just like the water had turned into mercury, investors could like invest in a rock and it still floated and everything was great.

4:11That was when all these climate tech funds came along, right? At the same time as all these climate tech funds, who maybe not all of them had done a lot of investments before, were just saying, look, it floats. It's great. And secondly, what happened when they did it is they said, look at Greta Thunberg. She's saying, we cannot do this. The planet will be a disaster. You've taken me out of school. I mean, what teenager doesn't want to leave school? But she didn't. So I think all of us believed that humans will do what they ought to do, which is, I think, I don't know if you met people, but that's not what people do.

4:46People think, as one of some smart Americans said, people think how they can get paid, made, laid. And on that list, climate change is not a great thing on that list. So the headache is, as much as it is about Trump, it is that hype. It is that insane hype that happened to the climate tech world, which if I was an LP, I would also be skeptic about some of the things. But at the same time, I also believe that what we see is that the complete operative system of society will be rewritten. And I think that we can see that we ought to do it, but we can also see it's kind of obvious. Think about how insane it is that some people, especially Trump, thinks that it's more efficient to dig up dead dinosaurs, to squish out their last juices, distill them, transport them, put in a thing that literally explodes all the time to propel a vehicle forward.

5:45Or you take electrons that come for free from the sky and you just turn that engine, like it just feels insane to think that we're more efficient to use fossil fuels. And I think again and again and again, like every time somebody says the word circularity, I always feel like I kind of want to roll my eyes, because I feel like, oh, it sounds so sweet and we ought to do it. But when I listen to a business, like just a lot of the aerospace businesses, they shed tons of titanium. And we go out on their scrap yards, their piles of titanium is next to their cigarette butts. This is an expensive material.

6:17So you feel like, why are you not sorting it and structuring it? Yeah, you know, there wasn't a big need 10, 20 years ago when these companies were founded or 50 years ago. Now there is. So the crazy thing about a lot of these climate things is that they're my favorite kind of company. Like when a lot of people like today and like yesterday was another event, people asked me, what do you invest in? I don't want to say climate. I actually want to say, pale but not invest in stuff that are not dumb. That's our favorite company. If you listen to how people produce steel today, it is so dumb. You just can't believe how dumb it is.

6:50So I love meeting a founder, and then the founder tells me how they're going to do it. And I'm sitting there, yeah, okay, it sounds kind of like, well, you're using software to sort this. I don't know what I care. And I have to interrupt them and say, sorry, how do people make steel today? And they say, oh, yeah, I'll tell you how to make steel today. And then they tell me. And I'm just sitting there, no, no, he's making up something. There's one steel plant somewhere that does this, right? And I start listening to podcasts about steel. I start Googling the steel. I'm like, the steel people are just insane.

7:14They're so dumb. And the crazy thing, then you need to start up was just the whole thing you're doing is they're just not dumb. And I love that as an investment thesis. Like, you should know how many times I've written in our investment thesis, the company is just setting the industry to be not dumb. The problem is I have two smart colleagues. So Heidi and you will never accept this as my investment thesis. But I think it's such a great thesis. So I believe that the whole ecosystem of most everything will be rewritten because it's more efficient to do it that way. And the thing is, tell me that transporting things with EVs isn't better.

7:48Tell me that, think about the crazy thing that a lot of climate investors are super hyped about fission and fusion. And so am I. My dad is a nuclear scientist. I was brought up by a person who says that. Do you know? In my dad's voice, it would be, do you know that something, how to tell if something is a science? Well, the answer is it doesn't contain the word science, Science, political science, not the science. Physics doesn't need the word science. That's the real science, no? So that's how I was brought up. And the thing is, I love thinking about fusion and fission. But the headache is, honestly, how many people believe that we're going to have more than 20 % of the mix of the grid to be fusion or fission in 10 years in the European grid?

8:30It takes a long time to build these plants. So we will have these crazy intermittent grids. Hello, Spain and Portugal. We will have that crazy situation because it's so cheap and we'll figure out with batteries and stuff, we'll have to patch it up, right? But it's insane to think that that grid that used to be power produced here, flushed out, you use it, now every single of these nodes are creating energy, producing it decentralized and using it decentralized, at the same time believing that we're not going to update the grid. We're going to rewrite the operative system of the planet. And then you're asking, hey, investors, of course we're going to be there.

9:06It's an amazing opportunity. The thing about venture that most people know is that venture is lending money to people believing one future. That's what I do, at least. So when talking about Trump, I always think about this. I always think about Radiohead. Radiohead has this great quote in Great Plastic Trees, which is, if you're a plastic surgeon, you've got to know, at the end, gravity always wins. Sorry, Trump. Gravity always wins. The expected value of climate change is huge, and that's one of the reasons I love investing in it. Let's be less dumb. Thanks a lot. Before you go, I just want to give a massive shout out to the partners who made the EUVC Summit and awards possible.

9:49So please do not tune out. We're partnering with these firms because they're great people with offerings that we know from our friends in the ecosystem are truly world class. First up, I want to give a big thanks to HSBC Innovation Banking. They helped us incept the awards in the very beginning. And truly, they are the leading bank for anyone in European venture. There's a reason why everyone knows them. Google Cloud, they were our venue hosted the summit. What a team, what a big effort they put on to help us. We're hugely grateful. Make sure to reach out to Arabella or Oksana at the Google Cloud team to hear how they can help you as well as your portfolio.

10:26Massive credits goes to them. Ace Alternatives. we have so many friends in the Berlin ecosystem partnered with these guys. Just the best fund ops team around. And as with any good restaurant, where the locals are is also where you get the best service. And now they're expanding across Europe, so they're definitely someone to talk to. Hainspoon, they're longtime partners of ours in both our own legal work. They're great supporters of us here at EUEC, and I definitely think that they are one of the go-to legal teams to have in your corner. CW Communications, our dear friends who helped us secure CNBC, Bloomberg, Financial Times, and many more for this summer.

11:04It's a joy working with Dan and Kathy and the team. Fundcraft, Digital Native, Full Suite, Lux Headquarter, and a great partner as you grow your firm out of Luxembourg. Definitely a fund admin to consider in your stack. I can only say that the team are incredible to work with. I'm very thankful that I've gotten to know them. I that you want to be thinking about. Portfolio IQ by Synaptic. You may know them for the Discover tool, which is branded on a Synaptic, but Portfolio IQ is absolutely a product you should know because there's no one that understands intelligence better than this team. And finally, Goodwin.

11:42They are a truly world-class legal partner you can trust. They're hands-on, business-oriented, and expert in everything and anything transatlantic. So those were our partners for the summit and awards. I know this might have been a bit long and boring, but really if you have these guys on your side I don't think your firm could be in any better hands and also They're helping us do what we're doing every day for you