🌍 Witness Climate Tech Turn Sci-Fi

👋 Welcome! Climate solutions are starting to look like fiction—thermal batteries, sun-reflecting experiments, ocean carbon hacks. Today’s issue explores the real innovations reshaping how we power, cool, and protect the planet.

Putin Unveils Russia’s AI Push — Putin outlined a sweeping plan to boost Russia’s AI capabilities by expanding domestic models, building new data centers, and securing nuclear-powered energy for compute. Stressing sovereignty and security, he rejected reliance on foreign LLMs as Russia advances homegrown systems.

Meta Debuts WorldGen for 3D Worlds — Meta unveiled a generative AI system that builds interactive, game-engine-ready 3D worlds from a text prompt in minutes. It streamlines blockouts and digital twins while shifting artists toward curating AI-generated environments rather than hand-building every detail.

YouTube Tops US Social Media Use — Report shows YouTube remains America’s most-used platform, with 84% of adults on it—well ahead of Facebook at 71% and Instagram at 50%. Daily use remains strong across platforms, while TikTok’s popularity skews young and newcomers like Threads, Bluesky, and Truth Social barely register.

Trump Pauses Plan to Fight State AI Laws — After pushing for a single federal AI standard and floating an order to challenge state regulations, Trump administration has paused its proposed AI Litigation Task Force. The shift follows bipartisan backlash, leaving state-level AI rules intact as political and industry debates intensify.

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AI May Shrink Grad Hiring — PwC’s global chairman says advancing AI could reduce entry-level graduate roles as automation replaces tasks once done by junior staff. While the firm needs hundreds of AI engineers it can’t find, it has dropped long-term headcount goals and recently cut 5,600 jobs—reflecting a shifting landscape.

CrowdStrike Fires Insider Linked to Hackers — CrowdStrike says it dismissed an employee who maliciously shared internal screen images. The company blames insider misconduct, not external compromise—while law enforcement investigates a broader hacking campaign tied to Salesforce-linked data theft.

Linux Creator Warns on AI Coding — Linus Torvalds says AI-assisted “vibe coding” is useful for beginners but risky for serious software. He warns that relying on AI for core systems creates long-term maintenance problems and floods developers with inaccurate bug reports, urging strict human oversight for mission-critical code.

Microsoft Skips 2025 DEI Report — MS says it won’t publish its annual diversity and inclusion report for 2025, ending a six-year run. The company claims it’s shifting to “more dynamic” storytelling formats, but the move comes as major firms scale back DEI programs under political pressure, raising concerns about transparency.

Google Faces Imminent Adtech Ruling — A federal judge signaled she may soon order Google to divest its adtech business after DOJ arguments that it illegally monopolized the market. Google plans to appeal, which could delay any breakup, even as it also faces a separate $3.5 billion EU antitrust fine.

Sierra Hits $100M ARR at Lightning Speed — AI customer-service startup Sierra reached $100 million ARR just 21 months after launch—one of the fastest climbs in enterprise software. Co-founded by ex-Salesforce CEO Bret Taylor, the company builds automated agents for tasks from returns to credit-card replacements.

IEA Points to Climate Tech Opportunity — The IEA’s updated forecasts show emissions flattening far faster than expected, signaling a shift that could unlock major economic gains in climate tech. Rapid EV adoption, cheaper renewables, and accelerating policies create a window for investors to enter early—before valuations rise.

Byju’s Founder Fights $1B Ruling — A U.S. bankruptcy judge ordered Byju Raveendran to pay over $1B after months of missed deadlines and unanswered questions about $533M in disputed funds. Raveendran denies wrongdoing, plans to appeal, and faces a dramatic collapse of what was once India’s most valuable startup.

Imagine energy systems that store solar heat like giant bricks, weather-engineering approaches that flirt with “dimming the sun,” and ocean technologies that literally bolster nature’s ability to absorb carbon. These aren’t ideas from a dystopian novel—they’re technologies emerging in 2025, shifting how we tackle climate change, and changing what’s possible.

Consider first a startup energy system that feels futuristic: modular thermal-battery units designed to deliver 24-hour clean power from sunlight without rare-earth metals. In short: Container-sized units that capture solar heat, store it in high-temperature bricks, and convert it to electricity on demand. This flips the solar model: from only during daylight, to full day-night dispatch. It’s the kind of tech you’d expect in a base on Mars—but the base is Earth, and the mission is decarbonisation.

Now, leap into what feels even more science-fiction: geoengineering. In the UK, the agency Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) is funding outdoor experiments that aim to reflect sunlight away from Earth—by spraying particles into the stratosphere or brightening clouds. This is not mere fantasy. It is deployed science-tech that blurs the line between climate mitigation and planetary engineering.

Then there’s the next frontier of carbon removal and ecosystem restoration. A recent report lists ten emerging technologies aimed at planetary health—from AI-driven Earth observation to ocean-based carbon uptake systems. One method, marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR), uses ocean alkalinisation and macro-algae farming to capture CO₂ in the sea. It sounds like something out of “Avatar” — but it’s being pursued as a real tool.

Of course, the flip side of this sci-fi-style tech is that each option comes with trade-offs. These systems are expensive, novel, and full of unanswered questions. Can thermal batteries scale? What happens if we reflect sunlight globally? Will marine interventions disrupt ecosystems? The 2025 tech-progress reports emphasise that while promise is high, so too are the stakes of governance, equity and unintended consequences.

What does this mean for us—all of us? It means the climate-tech horizon is expanding faster than many realise. The “future” of climate action might not just be more wind turbines—it could be giant thermal bricks and artificial stratospheric mirrors. For professionals, enthusiasts and anyone curious: now is a moment to track these tools, ask how they’ll be governed, and consider what role you might play in a world that’s deploying science-fiction today to solve very real problems.

Actionable Insights

3.86 × 10²⁶

That’s how many watts the Sun blasts into space every second—enough energy to power every device on Earth for millions of years if we could somehow catch it all.