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Deglobalizing the Solar Industry Would Cost the World At Least $15B by 2030
David Shultz
David Shultz reports on clean technology and electric vehicles, among other industries, for dot.LA. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Outside, Nautilus and many other publications.
The United States is in quite the pickle when it comes to the solar industry.
On one hand, the Biden administration wants to reduce emissions and hit the targets outlined in the Paris Agreement by installing as much solar power as cheaply and as quickly as possible. On the other hand, the U.S. wants to be a leader in clean energy tech, foster new industries and create new jobs in the sector. To do so, however, the U.S. has to reduce reliance on foreign powers—especially ones with economic and political practices as questionable as China.
And therein lies the issue: China manufactures 78% of the world’s photovoltaic (PV) cells—the key component in solar panels. Switching that production to U.S. soil will cost money and time—two luxuries in short supply in the race against climate change. A new study, published today in Nature, attempts to quantify just how much money globalization has saved the industry to date, and how much it would cost to shift away from the model.
To get a handle on how much money a globalized PV market has saved the world economy so far, researchers began by creating a model that estimated how much China, Germany and the United States (the three leaders in PV tech) learned and benefited from each other between 2008 and 2020. So far, the team calculates that the United States saved $24 billion compared to if it had gradually begun a 10-year transition to domestic-only PV production starting in 2008. Meanwhile, Germany saved $7 billion and China saved $36 billion, for a combined total of $67 billion.
The researchers then used the same model to project forward to 2030. They evaluated two different scenarios. In the first, the three countries continue to ramp up PV production at a rate consistent with the previous decade, while also gradually transitioning away from the globalized PV market to a fully domestic one. The second scenario assumes an even more aggressive expansion of solar energy tech–one that would actually get us closer to the climate targets laid out in the Paris Agreement–but at the same gradual shift away from globalized supply chains. Both scenarios are compared against leaving the industry as is.
Compared to a fully globalized supply chain, in the first scenario 2030 PV prices would be about 20% higher for all three countries, with energy costs increasing from $262 to $320 per kW in the United States. In the second scenario, in which the solar industry grows even more rapidly, the cost of deglobalization increases by another 5% — from $221 per kW to $276 in the United States.
Between 2020 and 2030, the researchers estimate that deglobalizing the PV market would cost the world economy $15 billion under the conservative estimate and as much as $36 billion if we actually build as much solar as the International Energy Agency says we need. In other words, the more aggressively we build out solar energy, the more deglobalization will sting.
Gang He, an assistant professor of energy policy at Stony Brook University and one of the authors of the study, says it’s up to policy makers to decide if that cost is worth paying.
“If countries all want to harvest the domestic benefits, then it gets harder for countries to work together,” says He. “We don't have a solution for that. We just present evidence-based research to show that if we move in that direction, this is what will happen. And we need to find a way to address that.”
One idea is to try to accomplish the shift with a carrot rather than a stick. In other words, instead of blocking the flow of goods or information with tariffs and or quotas, governments could focus on incentivizing domestic purchasing, He says. Incentives and investing would build the U.S. domestic solar industry without artificially inflating the cost of buying Chinese panels and thus limiting how much renewable energy the country can install per dollar. The problem is the gains from the green energy revolution are often distributed unequally.
“We need to introduce policy to redistribute the welfare,” says He. “Maybe it's through redistribution of the revenue or taxes or other mechanisms. It's very complicated, we understand. But simply blocking the global supply chain may not be the answer. No matter what the geopolitics, we still need to find a way to work together. That's the clear message I hope to deliver.”
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David Shultz
David Shultz reports on clean technology and electric vehicles, among other industries, for dot.LA. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Outside, Nautilus and many other publications.
How Hooked Founder Prerna Gupta Reimagined Fiction for Smartphones
01:55 PM | January 26, 2021
On this episode of Behind Her Empire podcast, hear from serial entrepreneur and investor Prerna Gupta. After being at the helm of many successful startups, Gupta is now the CEO and founder of Hooked, an app that is redefining fiction for the Snapchat generation. Hooked has over 100 million viewers across social media, a short form video streaming app called Hooked TV, and has received funding from Ashton Kutcher, Mariah Carey, LeBron James and Jamie Foxx, to name a few.
Key Takeaways
- Gupta grew up in the small town of Shawnee, Oklahoma, where she was acutely aware of her differences; she was a dark-skinned Indian girl with immigrant parents. Eventually, she embraced her differences as her strengths. Having a different vision is what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur.
- Inspired by Facebook, her first entrepreneurial venture was to start a social media networking site in India called Yaari. Eventually, Facebook entered India, and Yaari closed.
- Then, with her husband, Parag Chordia, Gupta started the company Khush, which developed apps including the successful LaDiDa and Songify.
- Khush was acquired by Smule in 2011, which left Gupta and her husband wealthy executives living in a tony part of the Bay Area. But Gupta and her husband were left unsatisfied as they got their joy and creativity from building companies. So, they quit and moved to Costa Rica to figure out their next step.
- Gupta was inspired by the book "The Lean Startup" by Eric Ries. Its basic premise is to build the simplest, most viable product and iterate on it with user data. This is the process she used for Hooked, her latest startup.
"I strongly encourage anybody...to just explore different options and to not get sucked into this idea that the only way to do something successful is to go raise money from some prestigious Sandhill Road VCs, because those voices are looking for something very specific and a lot of times money comes with expectations and it can actually oftentimes be detrimental...." -- Prerna Gupta
Prerna Gupta is the CEO of Telepathic Inc., which developed the smartphone app Hooked. She cofounded several startups focused on music, dating and short-stories.
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behind her empirefemale entrepeneurshookedprerna guptasocial mediaAppstelepathic incentertainment techwomen in tech
Yasmin Nouri
Yasmin is the host of the "Behind Her Empire" podcast, focused on highlighting self-made women leaders and entrepreneurs and how they tackle their career, money, family and life.
Each episode covers their unique hero's journey and what it really takes to build an empire with key lessons learned along the way. The goal of the series is to empower you to see what's possible & inspire you to create financial freedom in your own life.
$160M Tugboats and Undersea Drones: LA Startups Are Raising the Stakes
10:18 AM | September 12, 2025
🔦 Spotlight
Happy Friday LA,
This week’s headlines take us from the ocean floor to the docks of Long Beach, with LA companies leading the charge.
Image Source: Anduril
Let’s start with Anduril Industries, which rolled out three major announcements that underline just how quickly it is expanding its footprint across defense tech. The biggest milestone came from Ghost Shark, an extra large undersea drone developed in partnership with the Australian Navy. After just three years, it has moved from prototype to an official program of record, an unusually fast turnaround in an industry where procurement often takes decades. It marks a significant step for autonomous systems under the sea, an area where defense agencies have long struggled to innovate.
Image Source: Anduril
The company also revealed Menace I, a ruggedized system designed to bring petabyte scale processing power directly to the battlefield. Think of it as cloud computing without the cloud, giving troops the ability to process massive amounts of sensor data and video on site rather than relying on faraway servers. And finally, Anduril landed a contract to create mixed reality training tools, using immersive simulations to prepare service members for missions more effectively. Training has always been one of the costliest and most logistically challenging aspects of defense, and bringing advanced MR into the mix could transform how quickly and safely soldiers can get mission ready. Together, these updates show an LA company moving fast across land, sea and even into the training ground.
Image Source: Arc
Meanwhile, Arc is proving that electrification is not just for cars and yachts, it is now heading into some of the hardest working vessels on the water. The Venice based startup announced a $160 million deal with Long Beach’s Curtin Maritime to deliver eight hybrid electric tugboats. Tugboats are the muscle of the harbor, guiding massive cargo ships in and out of ports, and they usually burn through enormous amounts of diesel. Arc’s push into this space signals more than just a big contract. It is a pivot from building high performance electric speedboats for early adopters to tackling one of the most carbon heavy corners of maritime work.
The scale of this deal shows how far Arc has come since launching just a few years ago. Building hybrid electric tugboats is not a side project, it is a sign that the company wants to play a role in reshaping the future of port operations. And if LA’s own clean tech boat builder can make a dent in one of the dirtiest industries on the water, the ripple effects could stretch far beyond the coastline.
🤝 Venture Deals
LA Companies
- Apex Space closed a $200M Series D round led by Interlagos, with participation from existing investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Point72 Ventures and 8VC, pushing its valuation past $1 billion. The Los Angeles based company builds satellite buses, the standardized spacecraft platforms that carry and power payloads ranging from Earth imaging sensors to missile early warning systems. With the new funding, Apex plans to increase production capacity by 50 percent and more than double its manufacturing facility as demand for space defense systems continues to grow. - learn more
- Sapphire Technologies has raised an $18M Series C round, including investment from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries along with existing backers such as Equinor Ventures, Cooper and Company and Energy Capital Ventures. The funds will be used to scale up production at Sapphire’s manufacturing facility in Cypress, California, expand global deployments of its FreeSpin In-line Turboexpanders in regions like Japan and enter new markets. Sapphire’s technology converts otherwise wasted pressure energy, often from natural gas, into clean and emissions free electricity, playing a growing role in the global energy transition. - learn more
- LocalExpress has raised $6.2M in a venture round led by OXZ Capital to expand its AI data capabilities into the grocery industry. The Glendale based platform, already serving independent grocery and food retailers across the US, Canada and Latin America, is transitioning from supporting internal operations to becoming a premier data syndication hub in the sector. This round will fuel further development of its unified commerce solutions and help scale its AI-powered systems for harmonizing transaction and inventory data. - learn more
- ProRata.AI closed a $40M Series B financing round led by Touring Capital with participation from Bold Capital Partners and others, to launch Gist Answers, a new AI-as-a-service tool for publishers. Gist Answers lets publishers embed custom AI search, summarization, and recommendation features directly on their sites while maintaining control over their content. The move is designed to help publishers increase engagement, protect their content, and unlock new revenue streams in the AI era. - learn more
LA Venture Funds
- Upfront Ventures joined a group of investors in backing Sophont’s $9.22M seed round, led by Kindred Ventures. Sophont is building multimodal medical foundation models that combine data from pathology slides, brain scans, clinical notes, and lab results to enable functionalities like symptom triage, biomarker discovery, and clinical trial cohort selection. The funding will go toward increasing compute capacity, expanding data partnerships, and recruiting researchers to accelerate the development and release of model backbones and open science infrastructure. - learn more
- Presight Capital participated in the $24M Series A round raised by TERN Group, which was led by Notion Capital. The funding will help TERN scale its AI powered infrastructure for global healthcare worker recruitment, credentialing and mobility, especially helping caregivers and nurses in places like India gain access to international job opportunities. TERN plans to use the investment to expand into new geographies, deepen training programs, and further build tools that make migration, compliance and placement faster, fairer and more transparent. - learn more
- Emmeline Ventures joined a strong syndicate in Lōvu Health’s $8M Series A round, led by SJF Ventures. The funding will support Lōvu in scaling its AI-powered maternal health platform, enhancing remote monitoring, curated specialist services, and ongoing care from pre-conception through the first two years postpartum. With this investment, Lōvu aims to close gaps in maternal healthcare access and outcomes, especially for underserved populations. - learn more
- Integrity Growth Partners led a $28M Series A round in Pest Share, joined by existing investors including MetaProp, Capital Eleven and RE Angels. Pest Share is an on-demand pest control platform tailored for residential property managers, operating in all 48 states and serving 300,000 residential units. The capital will fuel expansion in single-family and multifamily rental markets, enhance product innovation, and deepen integrations with property management systems. - learn more
- Mantis VC joined Forerunner Ventures, Neo, Abstract and several angel investors in backing Hero Assistant’s $3.5M seed round at a $30M valuation. Hero Assistant is building a “Daily Assistant” super-app that consolidates things like calendars, weather, tasks, habits, goals, grocery ordering, notes and news, already replacing up to eight separate apps for its more than 300,000 users. The funds will help the company enhance features, scale growth, and deepen its reach in productivity. - learn more
- Wedbush Healthcare Partners took part in Odyssey Therapeutics’ oversubscribed $213M Series D financing round alongside both new and existing investors. The funding will be used to push forward Odyssey’s pipeline of clinical and preclinical therapies focused on treating complex autoimmune diseases. With this capital raise, Odyssey aims to make progress toward key clinical milestones and bring precision immunomodulation treatments closer to patients in need. - learn more
- BroadLight Capital participated in Higgsfield’s $50M Series A round, which was led by GFT Ventures and also backed by firms like Menlo Ventures and NextEquity Partners. Higgsfield is pushing its “click-to-video” AI platform, which lets users turn curated presets into cinematic clips with a single click rather than wrestling with complex prompts. In only five months since launch, the company has already drawn over 11 million users and more than 1.2 billion social media impressions, signaling strong momentum in the creator video space. - learn more
- Impatient VC participated in Sphinx’s $9.5M Seed round, which was led by Lightspeed and also included investors like Bessemer Venture Partners, Box Group, and K5. Sphinx is launching an AI copilot built especially for data scientists, one that thinks in statistics and patterns to turn raw data into actionable insights without skipping rigor. The funds will go toward refining tools that integrate into workflows like Jupyter notebooks and VSCode so data teams can explore, model, and make decisions faster. - learn more
- WME Group led a $20M Series B round in Palm Tree Crew, valuing the company at $215 million. The funding will power expansion across its hospitality venues, live events, and lifestyle ventures while leaning into WME’s entertainment, licensing, and brand network. Palm Tree Crew plans to scale its properties, deepen its festival footprint globally, and continue growing its portfolio of consumer brands as part of the next chapter. - learn more
- Blue Bear Capital participated in Nuclearn’s $10.5M Series A round that helps the company deepen its AI-capabilities for nuclear operations. Nuclearn, founded by engineers who've worked inside power plants, builds specialized tools like CAP AI to automate safety-critical, documentation-heavy tasks and ensure regulatory compliance. The funding will support product expansion, talent hiring, and scaling its platform to more reactors worldwide. - learn more
- Amplify was one of the investors joining Endurance28 and others in Cascade Bio’s $6M raise, which includes $2.8M in equity and $3.2M in nondilutive funding. Cascade Bio is advancing its enzyme-immobilization technology to help industrial partners transition from petrochemical processes to greener, biomanufacturing workflows. The funding will enable Cascade to scale its high-stability biocatalysts for use across chemicals, food ingredients, fragrances, and pharmaceuticals. - learn more
LA Exits
- Northstar has been acquired by Nayya, combining Northstar’s financial wellness tools with Nayya’s health, compensation and actuarial data platform. The unified offering introduces a “SuperAgent,” an AI adviser that not only helps employees understand benefits but, with their permission, can take actions like auto enrolling in wellness programs or appealing denied claims. The goal is to make health and wealth benefits simpler, more transparent and more useful year round rather than just during open enrollment. - learn more
- Integrated Rental Systems has been acquired by VitalEdge Technologies, a major provider of dealer management software for heavy equipment. Integrated Rental’s platform is considered one of the most advanced in its field, and this deal allows VitalEdge to offer more fully integrated solutions covering rental, parts, and service revenue streams for equipment dealers. Alise Moncure, CEO of Integrated Rental, will join VitalEdge’s leadership team as President of Expansion Markets, leading rental and other high-growth segments. - learn more
- VideoVerse has been acquired by Minute Media, bringing its AI-powered sports video platform Magnifi into the company’s portfolio. Magnifi helps leagues, teams and publishers automatically detect key moments, create instant highlights and distribute short-form video content more efficiently. With the acquisition, Minute Media is expanding beyond publishing to offer a more complete solution for video creation, distribution and monetization. - learn more
- Bespoke Treatment has been acquired by Stella Mental Health, expanding the company’s services in Los Angeles. Known for its integrative approach, Bespoke offers treatments such as stellate ganglion block for trauma, IV ketamine, Spravato® and intensive outpatient programming. Through the acquisition, Stella is broadening its footprint and strengthening its ability to deliver personalized behavioral health care. - learn more
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