2024: TDK Ventures Investment Director’s 2025 Predictions
2025 will likely bring a big change to the climate tech ecosystems, says Tina Tosukhowong, Investment Director at TDK Ventures.
TDK Ventures helps early-stage materials, energy, cleantech, industry 5.0, mobility and healthtech startups bring positive impact to the world, with the likes of Peak Energy — founded by ex-Tesla Director Landon Mossburg and Cameron Dales, formerly of ENOVIX and Lockheed Martin — in its VC portfolio.
With a PhD in chemical engineering and more than 20 years in deep tech investments and biotech, Tina believes there are sectors that are poised to thrive — as well as others facing challenges amid sweeping changes.
Tina’s key predictions are:
- 2025 will likely bring a big change to the climate tech ecosystems. “I expect grid resiliency, critical minerals, nuclear and climate adaptation areas to do well. Solar deployment and energy storage should remain strong given the growth in energy demand by power-hungry data centres.”
- Nascent and highly capital-intensive technologies that were betting on government incentives from the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office could face some headwinds in the US. “These are areas, such as green hydrogen, green cement and green steel. We could see startups working in these areas heading overseas to deploy projects where regulatory frameworks are more supportive.”
TDK Ventures 2025 predictions with Investment Director Tina Tosukhowong
Tina continues: “The areas I want to invest in 2025 are around grid tech, critical minerals, low-carbon building materials and climate adaptation.”
Tina’s reasons are:
Data centre energy consumption will continue to grow rapidly
"There is a need to expand the transmission. The growth of renewable energy will also continue because it is low-cost and carbon-free energy.
"However, the need to manage intermittency to ensure grid resilience will be there. Any hardware and software solutions that can alleviate the pain points will be of interest."
I expect to see a tailwind in the critical mineral space
"This is because of the onshoring manufacturing policy that should support domestic supply chain development for metals and critical minerals.
"Metal recycling and perhaps mining could see an uplift from lower regulatory barriers."
I think interesting alternative, low-carbon building materials will emerge
"Today we know the embodied carbon in building materials contributes a lot of greenhouse gas in the building sectors. Cement and steel industries are hard-to-abate sectors and it is very CAPEX intensive to commercialise green cement or green steel technologies.
"In addition, we see government grants and loan programmes drying up for these sectors. However, I think the industry will find creative solutions around it.
"There is still a customer need and we’ve already seen an announcement from the big players, like Microsoft, who plans to build data centres from sustainably-sourced wood."
Sad to say that there will be headwinds to net zero by 2050
"We will likely see a lot of impacts from severe weather patterns.
"The need to protect assets will still be there and I think there will be more interest in how to utilise more data and technologies to make more accurate predictions of where, when and the severity of the climate risks that will be happening to help better prepare for emergency response."
I think nuclear topics, both small modular reactors and fusion will get a lot of interest from investors
"Given that energy is a national security topic and we need more baseload clean energy, I think there will be continued investor appetite in this area."
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