What the Silicon Valley Bank collapse means for climate tech
Zero: The Climate Race
Bloomberg
4.7 • 219 Ratings
🗓️ 16 March 2023
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What happens when a "climate bank" goes under? This week, Bloomberg Green reporter Akshat Rathi interviews the CEO of an AI battery startup that had just received $3 million in funding about the stresses of recovering money from Silicon Valley Bank as it collapsed. Then, Bloomberg reporter Mark Bergen explains what made SVB so important to climate tech funding and which institutions might be poised to take its place.
Read more about the collapse and its impact on climate tech, here.
Read a transcript of this episode, here.
Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks this week to Venkat Viswanathan, Brian Eckhouse, Mark Bergen, Coco Liu, Olivia Rudgard, Josh Saul, David Baker, Sommer Saadi, and Kira Bindrim.
Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Zero. I'm Akshatrati. This week, the collapse of a climate bank. |
| 0:07.0 | Just over a week, Silicon ValleyB, had a sterling reputation as a climate bank. |
| 0:26.6 | It served more than 1,500 companies doing sustainability work, which included everything from small, innovative climate startups to mid-sized solar projects. |
| 0:36.6 | It was a bank built around working with young companies pursuing big ideas. |
| 0:42.0 | Late last week, the bank collapsed. |
| 0:44.5 | Yesterday, SVB says that they are trying to raise more capital. |
| 0:48.3 | There are recent developments that concern a few banks. |
| 0:52.5 | And you have people like Peter Thiel advising clients to pull money out. |
| 0:56.2 | You get that run on the banks. |
| 0:57.4 | The government regulator in charge, the FDIC, took control of Silicon Valley Bank's assets. |
| 1:03.0 | Mr. President, what do you know right now about why this happened? |
| 1:06.4 | It started with a worry among a small group of venture capitalists and startups that the bank was running short on cash. |
| 1:12.6 | That snowballed into a bank run. |
| 1:14.6 | And within hours, the bank's customers had tried to withdraw $42 billion, about a fifth of the bank's holdings. |
| 1:22.6 | The shortage of cash became so severe that the bank seized normal operations and was taken |
| 1:28.4 | over by US regulators to limit the damage the very next day. |
| 1:33.7 | Startups began to worry about how they would pay their staff the following week, and venture |
| 1:37.8 | capitalists worked through the weekend to stump up emergency cash. |
| 1:42.0 | Relief came in the form of US regulators promising that all deposits |
| 1:45.6 | will be safe. And on Monday, startups could breathe easy as they could access their cash |
| 1:50.9 | again. But the headache is far from over, particularly for climate tech companies that are |
| 1:56.5 | readying themselves for explosive growth and need gobs of cash. Climate tech has been a bright |
... |
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