Evaline Tsai, Gigascale Partner on Deep Tech and Climate Breakthroughs

**Grace Gong** (0:03)
Hi, Evaline. Welcome to Venture with Grace. Hi.

**Evaline Tsai** (0:07)
Thanks for having me.

**Grace Gong** (0:09)
Sorry. I'm like, actually, whenever it's live, I'm giving myself a heart attack at all times.
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Maybe we could start from your journey into Venture, and what were some core lessons that you've learned from, whether it's Samsara, Costanoa, or first structure ventures before you got into becoming a partner at Gigascale?

**Evaline Tsai** (1:32)
Yeah.
Happy to give an intro.
I'm Evaline. I'm a partner at Gigascale. I helped start the firm about three and a half years ago to really build the firm from the ground up. So I've always been very passionate about leveraging science and engineering to solve big challenges from an early age. I remember even in high school, I would be spending summers, holidays in the lab. One of the things I worked on actually was figuring out how to leverage electricity to turn CO2 into chemicals. And that passion led me all the way to getting my Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Cambridge.
But while I was in academia, I just saw a lot of projects were just stuck in the lab. They weren't commercially oriented enough. And so I ended up catching the bug. I co-founded a biotech company that was backed by YC. And then I got into Venture because I was excited about marrying my startup experience with technical acumen to find and invest in technologies that really scale. So my first start in Venture was at a firm called Fine Structure Ventures. It was within Fidelity's private investing arm. So there I led and supported investments in deep tech and climate companies like Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Boston Metal, DB Biotech. And then I decided to team up with my partners, Mike and Victoria at Gigascale because what I learned from my first initial years in Venture was that it really takes all three legs of the stool. Like you need operational, climate, technical experience to find, decide on and then support the best climate and deep tech companies.

**Grace Gong** (3:09)
For sure. I wonder, so like I guess like, I feel like this sector has been booming lately, especially I feel like with the rise of like deep tech, physical AI, and maybe we could start with like, you know, Gigascale's like general like thesis since you guys invest in like clean energy grid, like industry and artificial intelligence. Obviously, everyone invests in AI, but I feel like the first time I heard about you guys was from my friends were building like, you know, electronic truck. And, you know, they speak highly about you guys, but maybe we could start from like, you know, the type of like company that you guys investing in and the thesis itself.

**Evaline Tsai** (3:51)
Yeah. So at Gigascale, we're super, super focused on the physical economy.
And during the last few years, we've just realized that the physical economy is being completely rebuilt because there's a bunch of things happening all at once. And just to give you a couple of examples, like we're seeing more of wildfires in California and across the globe, which is actually causing utilities to wake up and realize they need to invest in grid resilience. Countries are also realizing that for national security reasons, they need to reshore manufacturing. And then of course, everyone's talking about AI. So I'll have to mention, you know, data centers, right? They need power faster than the grid can deliver it. So we're seeing also a bunch of interests in new energy sources to meet that demand. So we started Gigascale because we saw an opportunity to rebuild these critical systems to meet the current moment with new technologies that are just better. So they're more affordable, they're more reliable, and they just happen to be cleaner too.