At the start of 2024, we launched Predict_It, an open survey designed to test our audience’s ability to foresee the future. We asked participants to predict key trends in venture funding, commodity prices, EV sales, and the public markets—putting their industry knowledge and instincts to the test. As the year unfolded, 2024 proved to be anything but predictable. Now, it’s time to assess our collective audience’s accuracy and celebrate who had the sharpest foresight.
What will CleanTech VC funding be in 2024?
- Answer: CleanTech VC funding was $30bn, according to CTVC.
- Predict_It Responses: Both investors and non-investors were aligned in expecting this number to be $35bn, which was overly optimistic. However, the most common answer was $30bn. Perhaps these respondents were lucky that this was a round number?
Which CleanTech vertical will see the largest increase in funding in 2024, from 2023 levels?
- Answer: The CleanTech verticals that saw the largest increases in 2024 was Built Environment, which increased its funding by an impressive 30%. Carbon came in second place in investment growth in 2024.
- Predict_It Responses: 15% of our respondents selected this category, making it the 4th most popular category. The most popular response, Energy, was the vertical with the most investment, but this category has seen a 13% decline in 2024.
How many CleanTech unicorns will be born in 2024?
- Answer: 2024 was not a great year in the creation of unicorns in the CleanTech sector, with only 4 being made. This was a notable contraction from previous years (12 in 2022, 6 in 2023).
- Predict_It Reponses: Our aggregate responses were for 7, so a slight uptick from 2023. Unfortunately, unicorns have become rarer than ever.
Price of Lithium
- Answer: Lithium’s depressed price stuck around in 2024. While many in the commodity’s industry were hoping for a bounceback (as were startups in alternative battery chemistries), 2024 did not deliver that. Unfortunately the light shiny metal ended the year at $10,753, down more than 20% since the start of 2024.
- Predict_It Responses: Most of our responses expected lithium to end the year at $18,000, pretty far off the eventual figure. Investors were slightly more bullish on the commodity ($21.5k) compared to the aggregate responses ($19k).
Price of Uranium
- Answer: Nuclear has enjoyed its time in the sun in the past year. The price of uranium was on a tear at the end of 2023, and that was before we had a confluence of Big Tech companies partner with nuclear companies, large and small. Unfortunately, this continued momentum did not result in further price appreciation for uranium, which ended the year at $72 per lb, a nearly 20% decrease from the start of the year.
- Predict_It Responses: While most of our audience correctly predicted a price drop throughout the year, it was not nearly to the extent actually seen in 2024. Investors were closer, having pegged the eventual uranium price to $83 compared to non-investors, who predicted a price of $95 per lb.
EV Sales in the US
- Answer: According to the US EIA, EV sales had a slight percentage increase from 9.3% to 9.4% of new light duty car sales in the US.
- Predict_It Responses: Most of our responses were notably more bullish for this question, with the majority of responses being in the 11-12% range. This question was the second-least rewarding point total for our survey respondents.
ICLN ETF performance in 2024
- Answer: 2024 was a strong year for S&P 500, with the broad US index advancing an impressive 23% in 2024. The ICLN ETF mirrored this performance… in the opposite direction with a 26% contraction over the year. This meant the ICLN ETF lagged the market by a staggering 49% in 2024.
- Predict_It Responses: Investor responses in our survey predicted a performance for the 8% below the S&P 500, while non-investors predicted a pessimistic -24%. In this stock pick, the non-investors bested the investors! However, cumulatively this was the question that awarded the least amount of points in our survey with the least amount of people getting close to the pin.
US Oil Production
- Answer: The United States produced more oil per day than any other country in the history of the world in 2024, with a daily production of 13.2 million barrels per day (mmbd).
- Predict_It Responses: Our investors nailed this prediction, while non-investors predicted a more bearish production of 12.7 mmbd.
Now that we have reviewed the results from 2024 and how our contestants did in aggregate, it’s time to shower some praise upon the winner. Our top performer nailed two of our questions, specifically how much cleantech VC would be raised in 2024 and how many unicorns would be born in the sector. Given the correct answers were both well below the averages, being a bear turned out to work out in this case. Perhaps even more impressively, our winner only had two responses that did not generate any points, meaning they were within 10% of the correct answer on almost all of these questions.
Our winner is Curran Hughes from Renegade Plastics. As an employee at an early stage climate tech start-up, Curran no doubt has an insider’s view of the current climate for commodities and start-up funding. Congratulations, Curran!
And thank you to everyone who participated in last year’s survey! We have many new opportunities for engagement coming up, and are excited to share them with you all.
