Ten days ago, Nike made the headlines when it announced NIKELAND, its own virtual space in Roblox modeled after its real-life headquarters. This move was followed by Adidas, which teased a collaboration with Sandbox, a blockchain-powered virtual world and followed up with a partnership with crypto exchange Coinbase. This sudden rush from large consumer brands to…
Major video games are gradually turning into Metaverse destinations offering to their vast user base a wide range of activities well beyond gaming and including notably social interactions, entertainment and shopping in a 3D world. Roblox, our second largest portfolio company, clearly stands ahead of the pack when it comes to building a Metaverse, as…
Facebook made the headlines last week when it announced a rebranding to Meta, a strategic shift towards the Metaverse and massive investments over coming years to support its ambitions (starting with $10 billion in 2021). While the timing of these announcements could have much to do with an attempt to divert attention from recent bad…
The increasing climate change awareness over the last years, from both governments and consumers, has resulted in the fight to eradicate greenhouse gases becoming a global priority. As approximately one-third of CO2 emissions are attributed to agriculture, the sector has come under the spotlight to implement changes in the way it produces food. Among various…
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, cybercrime activity has been on a tear (e.g. +130% for ransomware) as companies had no choice but to open up their IT network to remote workers and devices, often struggling to comprehensively secure it on time, leaving entry points for malicious attacks. Interestingly, 50% of these security failures…
Cleantech stocks have been in the eye of the storm this year, with solar, wind and hydrogen pure players declining 20-40% on average notably as the US government’s push in favor of hydrogen and other clean energies in the Infrastructure bill was underwhelming (e.g. $9.5 billion for hydrogen). That said, it seems like Democrats have…
Corporate sustainability is gradually waking up to the global water risk, with large companies such as PepsiCo and Facebook pledging in recent weeks to become net water positive by 2030, meaning that they will contribute more water to the ecosystem than they consume. After “carbon neutral”, “net water positive” could soon become the new green…
Recently, we commented that the Internet-of-Things (IoT) was finally gaining traction in the industrial world and was on track to become 5G’s killer app as it provides industrial companies with the opportunity to attach a wide range of digital services and features (monitoring, analytics…) to their installed base of cars, factory machines or robots. The…
There has been a lot of talk recently about the Metaverse, with notably Mark Zuckerberg commenting during Facebook’s latest earnings call that “we believe this is going to be the successor of the mobile Internet … In addition to being the next generation of the Internet, the Metaverse is also going to be the next…
On August 3rd, California water regulators voted a water restriction impacting thousands of farmers in the Sacramento and San Joaquin watersheds. Permission is now required to divert more than 55 gallons of water per day from rivers or streams. This (ridiculously low) limit further illustrates one of the worst droughts in California, which is in…