Evidence since 2021 broadly matches all key elements of Friedberg’s prediction.

1. Pronounced ‘second act’ shift of successful tech investors into climate

• Chris Sacca is a textbook example: after running Lowercase Capital, one of the most successful early‑stage tech funds of the 2010s (Twitter, Uber, Instagram, Stripe), he retired from broad tech VC and now leads Lowercarbon Capital, described in 2025 conference materials as a fund pursuing ambitious climate solutions across energy, materials, transportation, food, etc. (sosvclimatetech.com)
• Former Meta CTO Mike Schroepfer, who achieved major financial and career success scaling Meta’s products and data centers, left the CTO role in 2022 explicitly to focus on climate investing and philanthropy via his climate‑focused VC firm Gigascale Capital and related entities. (en.wikipedia.org)
• New climate‑specific funds and strategies have been launched by existing, previously more generalist firms. For example, Collaborative Fund (founded 2010, historically a generalist early‑stage investor) launched its climate‑focused Shared Future Fund in 2022, and later raised a new flagship fund while highlighting climate technology as a core theme. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Industry overviews of VC partner moves explicitly cite the rise of climate tech as a magnet for experienced investors looking for new missions, framing this as part of a broader ‘second act’ trend in venture careers. (learnlater.com)
• A 2023 Venture Climate Alliance, including major generalist firms such as Tiger Global and Union Square Ventures, was formed to increase commitments to climate‑tech and align portfolios with net‑zero goals, signaling that mainstream tech VCs are formally adding climate to their remits. (reddit.com) Taken together, these do not mean most top 2010s VCs moved into climate, but they do show a visible, repeated pattern of highly successful tech investors and executives treating climate‑tech as a mission‑driven ‘second act’, just as Friedberg described.

2. Surge of capital into climate‑tech after 2021

• Global cleantech/climatetech investment boomed around and after 2021. One survey notes that in the 12 months to Q3 2022, climate‑tech accounted for more than a quarter of all venture dollars invested – a higher share than in most prior quarters. (en.wikipedia.org)
• A Financial Times analysis reports that dedicated climate‑tech VC hit about $48 billion at the 2021 peak and, even after market cooling, still totaled roughly $30 billion in 2024, outperforming the broader VC market where overall investment is down more than 50% from 2021. (ft.com)
• Numerous new or expanded climate funds have closed in this period despite tougher conditions, such as VoLo Earth’s second climate‑tech fund ($135m) and Planeteer Capital’s first‑time climate‑tech fund, which attracted notable tech and climate investors including former Meta CTO Mike Schroepfer. (wsj.com)
• At the same time, total VC has increasingly skewed toward AI by 2024 (roughly one‑third of all VC dollars), indicating that while AI is now dominant, climate‑tech still represents a large, distinct capital wave rather than a niche. (barrons.com) This clearly matches the prediction that there would be an ‘insane’ surge of funding into climate‑tech in the years following 2021.

3. Significant share of funded climate‑tech being uneconomic or failing commercially

• An Equal Ventures climate memo in 2025 explicitly describes a boom‑and‑bust pattern: generalist VCs poured into climate deals in 2022–23 at ‘astronomical’ prices and have since largely pulled back, leaving many of the very companies they had fervently backed, and characterizing that wave as ‘tourist capital’. (newsletter.equal.vc) This is essentially Friedberg’s scenario of non‑disciplined capital flowing into questionable climate businesses.
• The same FT piece on climate VC notes that the number of active climate investors has fallen for three consecutive years and that capital is consolidating around more specialized firms, consistent with many earlier climate bets proving weaker than hoped. (ft.com)
• Concrete climate‑tech examples illustrate overfunding and commercial failure:
  • Northvolt, heavily funded as Europe’s flagship EV‑battery champion, missed production targets by a wide margin, saw major customer contracts canceled, had a key expansion subsidiary file for bankruptcy in 2024, and struggled to secure rescue financing – cited as a case of ‘death by overfunding’ where enormous capital masked weak fundamentals. (linkedin.com)
  • Several high‑profile EV and green‑mobility startups once emblematic of the decarbonization boom (e.g., Nikola, Lordstown Motors) collapsed into bankruptcy after the 2020–21 hype cycle, despite prior multibillion‑dollar valuations. (polityka.co.pl)
  • Waste‑to‑methanol and gasification projects using Enerkem’s technology saw an Edmonton plant shut down a decade early and related projects in Canada enter financial distress, raising explicit questions in industry analysis about whether the technology is a failure rather than a viable climate solution. (linkedin.com)
  • The geoengineering startup Make Sunsets, funded by VCs to commercialize stratospheric aerosol injection via ‘cooling credits’, was forced to halt operations in Mexico after a government ban, illustrating how speculative, controversial models can rapidly hit regulatory and market walls. (eenews.net)
• Broader startup data show a sharp increase in shutdowns of VC‑backed companies that raised in the 2020–21 boom, with many failing due to lack of market need or unsustainable unit economics; climate‑tech is part of this broader pattern. (linkedin.com) These patterns are exactly what Friedberg anticipated when he warned of ‘insane’ funding into climate companies that ‘aren’t real businesses’ or rely on technologies that ‘will never work out’.

4. Overall assessment By late 2025:

• There has been a clearly identifiable wave of second‑career or ‘second act’ moves by high‑profile, financially successful tech investors and executives into climate‑tech investing and philanthropy.
• Climate‑tech experienced a large post‑2021 capital surge, becoming a major VC category before partially cooling.
• A meaningful subset of those climate‑related ventures have proven commercially weak or failed outright, and industry commentary now openly discusses overvaluation, tourist capital, and uneconomic projects in the climate‑tech boom.

The magnitude of the ‘second act’ trend may be somewhat smaller than his rhetorical ‘almost 100%’ phrasing suggests, and AI has since stolen some of the spotlight. But directionally and in its core claims, the prediction has played out as described. Hence the prediction is best judged as right.