| Hi, Didong. I bet you haven’t given much thought to concrete lately. Concrete isn’t sexy — after all, this is literally the mortar in “brick and mortar” — but it is ubiquitous, with an estimated 10 billion-plus tons of the stuff produced annually. We explore why climate-focused investors are taking an increasing interest in cleaner concrete. Concrete is big business — it’s an estimated $440 billion-plus global industry — but it’s also the quintessential infrastructure-heavy, capital-intensive industrial sector that startup investors typically like to avoid. But with an estimated one-tenth of annual global CO2 emissions coming from construction and building materials, investors have poured hundreds of millions into startups like CarbonBuilt and Prometheus Materials that are working on reducing the carbon footprint of concrete. Related Crunchbase Pro list: Clean Concrete-Focused Recently Funded Companies OneTrust, a privacy management startup, raised $150 million in a new round led by Al Gore’s investment firm. The new funding gives OneTrust a $4.5 billion valuation — lofty, to be sure, but also a 12% decline from its previous valuation. The deal points both to continued interest in privacy and compliance software, and persistent private market melancholy. The U.S. is undermining its own potential and jeopardizing its future as a global leader in innovation by overlooking immigrant startup founders, argues Semyon Dukach of One Way Ventures. He offers up three mistakes he’s noticed his fellow VCs make in pitch meetings that lead to promising founders with immigrant backgrounds slipping under their radar. Three U.S.-based startups landed nine-figure raises last week — and for a change, none of them had anything to do with AI or biotech. Here’s a closer look at 10 companies that raised sizable funding deals last week. As of mid-year, more than 150,000 tech workers in the U.S. had lost their jobs, per The Crunchbase Tech Layoffs Tracker. We’ve seen numerous startups shut down completely, laying off their entire staff. Other companies — we’re looking at you, Microsoft and Amazon — have become repeat offenders on our tracker. But is the wave of layoffs slowly subsiding? | 
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