Good day. Climate-tech investors believe that the current jump in oil prices because of the conflict in the Middle East could help boost demand for their portfolio companies.

“Higher oil prices make the economics of renewables and storage immediately comparatively more favorable,” said Sophie Purdom, managing partner at Planeteer Capital. Even if oil prices then decline, the volatility itself “strengthens the case for more resilient, distributed energy systems,” she said. “Instability inherently favors renewables,” Purdom noted.

Climate-tech venture investors and startups have already been shifting how they position their businesses over the past year, deemphasizing impacts on the environment and highlighting national security and energy independence aspects.

The team at VoLo Earth Ventures said they expect the current volatility to raise costs and tighten capital, which could add to challenges for climate-tech startups in the short-term.

“But it also strengthens the strategic case for technologies that reduce dependence on volatile fuel markets and bring new capacity online faster. Historically, energy transitions accelerate when the cost of dependence becomes visible, and we may be in one of those periods now,” according to a statement shared with WSJ Pro by Kareem Dabbagh, managing partner for VoLo Earth Ventures.

While prices have been rising, the benchmark U.S. oil futures are still well below their inflation-adjusted average of roughly $96 a barrel over the past two decades.

And now on to the news...

A weapons bet. Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz are co-leading a multibillion-dollar investment in defense startup Anduril Industries that doubles the company’s valuation to $60 billion, including the investment, according to people familiar with the matter.

• Existing investors Lux Capital and Founders Fund also plan to participate, some of the people said. A spokesperson for Anduril declined to comment.
   
• California-based Anduril builds artificial-intelligence-powered hardware and software for autonomous weaponry. It was founded in 2017 by tech billionaire and serial entrepreneur Palmer Luckey. The company works closely with the U.S. government on autonomous drones.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman defended his decision to allow the Pentagon to use its tools for classified work, fielding questions from staff at an all-hands meeting Tuesday about the principles behind the decision.

• OpenAI announced its Defense Department deal on Friday, hours after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth designated rival Anthropic a supply-chain risk, a move rarely used against a U.S. company. After backlash against the potential for OpenAI’s deal with the Pentagon to allow for mass surveillance, the company changed its agreement to explicitly state that domestic surveillance isn’t allowed.

Semiconductor performance has increased dramatically, but at significant costs in capital, land and energy. There might be a better way to meet soaring demand for high-end computing by supplementing semiconductors with something new. One idea is to relegate certain demanding workloads to superconductors, which conduct electricity with zero resistance and produce almost no heat. That reduces energy consumption by orders of magnitude, eliminating the need for extensive cooling and spacing of components in data centers, compared with the dominant production technology for integrated circuits.

People

Agricultural biotechnology startup Alora appointed Adam Helms as chief executive officer. He succeeds founding CEO Luke Young, who has transitioned to chief technology officer.

Fig Security, a New York-based platform that finds and fixes broken security flows across SecOps infrastructure, emerged from stealth with $38 million in seed and Series A funding from investors including Team8 and Ten Eleven Ventures.

JetStream Security, a San Francisco-based AI governance platform, raised $34 million in seed funding. Redpoint Ventures led the round, which included participation from Falcon Fund and others.

RenoFi, a Philadelphia-headquartered home renovation financing platform, closed a $22 million Series B round led by Fifth Wall.

PlasmaLeap Technologies, a Sydney-based startup focused on zero-emissions production of ammonia and nitric acid, secured about $20 million in new funding from investors including Investible.

Firmable, an Australia-based AI sales platform, landed 14 million Australian dollars (about $10 million) in Series A funding led by Airtree.

Payr, a London-based developer of payments infrastructure enabling tenants to pay rent with their existing credit cards, was seeded with a $2.1 million investment led by Ingenii Capital.

• Meta to Create New Applied AI Engineering Organization
   
• News Corp, Meta in AI Content Licensing Deal Worth Up to $50 Million a Year
   
• Iran Strikes Shatter the Gulf’s Post-Oil Pivot
   
• The AI Evangelist Shaking Up a 220-Year-Old Toothpaste Maker
   
• Ziff Davis to Sell Connectivity Division to Accenture for $1.2 Billion

• AI companies are spending millions to thwart this former tech exec’s congressional bid (TechCrunch)
   
• How the experts figure out what’s real in the age of deepfakes (The Verge)

This newsletter was compiled by Yuliya Chernova and Zachary Cole.

Share your tips, comments and questions: vcnews@wsj.com

The team: Matthew Strozier, Yuliya Chernova, and Brian Gormley.

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