Critical Capital

Crux and Latitude Studios
  • 4.7 (50)
  • Investing
  • Updated Biweekly

The future of energy is shaped by markets, policy, and capital flows — not just technology. Hosted by Crux CEO Alfred Johnson, Critical Capital explores the interlocking forces powering clean and critical infrastructure. The show features in-depth conversations at the intersection of energy, government, and global markets.

Episodes

  1. 1d ago

    AI is disrupting services. What does that mean for power demand?

    AI is still in the foothills of enterprise adoption, but the infrastructure buildout required to support it is already reshaping energy markets, capital allocation, and industrial policy. Data centers are driving demand for new generation and transmission, while billions of dollars flow into the hardware and software needed to train and run increasingly powerful models.  That makes energy infrastructure a big constraint in the AI buildout race. Data centers require more power generation, transmission, grid capacity, and additional physical infrastructure; all major investments. And those energy systems will have impacts on the cost of running potentially more power-hungry frontier AI models. That’s a lot of uncertainty even before considering the economic transformation still to come. If AI moves beyond software and begins to fundamentally change how services like law, accounting, insurance, and finance are delivered, it could reshape a far larger part of the economy and create a new wave of demand for both digital and physical infrastructure. In this episode of Critical Capital, Alfred Johnson sits down with Jake Saper, a partner at Emergence Capital and an early investor in enterprise software and AI infrastructure. Saper argues that the biggest transformation from AI may not happen inside software companies at all. Instead, it could reshape the much larger services economy, creating a new category he calls AI-native services (AINS). Saper explains why he believes companies built from scratch around AI may have an advantage over traditional service-business roll-ups, and why the biggest challenge for these companies is delivering their services with AI rather than simply adding more human labor. The conversation also explores the increasingly blurry line between software and physical infrastructure.  Critical Capital is a co-production of Crux and Latitude Studios. Learn more about how Crux is financing the future of energy.

  2. Aug 4

    Senator Thom Tillis on energy, China, and leaving Congress

    Energy policy has become increasingly polarized just as the U.S. faces record electricity demand, a rapidly expanding AI economy, and growing competition from China.  In this episode, Alfred Johnson speaks with North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis about why the country's biggest energy challenge is the inability to build durable, bipartisan policy that survives changes in political leadership.  Drawing on more than a decade in the Senate, Tillis argues for an "all-of-the-above" energy strategy that embraces renewables, natural gas, nuclear, and other generation sources rather than treating them as competing ideologies. He discusses the economic consequences of abruptly cancelling energy projects, the need for stable investment signals, and why rising electricity demand requires policymakers to focus on practical solutions instead of partisan rhetoric. Tillis also discusses domestic manufacturing, critical minerals, AI governance, and the importance of strengthening America's energy supply chains while remaining globally competitive.  Critical Capital is a co-production of Crux and Latitude Studios. Learn more about how Crux is financing the future of energy.

  3. Jul 21

    The unprecedented opportunity for infrastructure investors

    We are entering a period of infrastructure development unlike anything we’ve seen in the last century. The infrastructure economy is witnessing a generational redesign and a fundamental reshaping of the physical fabric on which society is built. In this episode, Alfred Johnson is joined by Jessica Bailey, Global Head of Infrastructure at Nuveen, an institutional giant with over $1.4 trillion in assets under management. Jessica directs $40 billion in infrastructure investments and discusses how the collision of the energy transition, digitalization, and aging grid systems is creating an unprecedented investment landscape. Jessica shares her unique journey from climate philanthropy at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund to pioneering C-PACE financing. She also explains the financing structures needed to scale domestic manufacturing, why economic realities are beginning to override political gridlock, and why the biggest check on AI growth won't be capital, but could be energy and community pushback. Critical Capital is a co-production of Crux and Latitude Studios. Learn more about how Crux is financing the future of energy.

  4. Jul 7

    Navigating the new world disorder

    Conflict and disaster displace millions of people around the world every year, and millions more live with food insecurity, unreliable access to electricity or no electricity at all.  These same populations are also the most adversely impacted by climate change, geopolitical competition for resources, and global instability.  David Miliband, CEO of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and former UK Foreign Secretary, says the world is at a "hinge moment." In this episode, Alfred Johnson sits down with Miliband to discuss the breakdown of the post-WWII international order and what it means for the world’s most vulnerable populations. Miliband explains how "energy poverty" severely cripples humanitarian recovery and highlights the infuriating paradox of our time: the world has never been richer or more technologically advanced, yet distributed clean energy remains out of reach for those who need it most. They discuss concrete, scalable solutions the International Rescue Committee is pioneering, like solarizing health clinics and water pumps, and fueling breakthrough market solutions through Airbel Ventures. Critical Capital is a co-production of Crux and Latitude Studios. Learn more about how Crux is financing the future of energy.

  5. Jun 23

    The trillion-dollar collision between AI and the grid

    The rapid rise of AI has sparked a multi-trillion-dollar collision between our aging power grid and massive, energy-hungry AI "factories."  Unlike traditional cloud data centers, AI training workloads are incredibly dense and volatile, capable of spiking or dropping power demand in milliseconds and threatening grid stability.  Dr. Varun Sivaram, CEO of Emerald AI, says the solution lies in load flexibility.  By using software to dynamically shift AI workloads across time (temporal flexibility) or across the country (spatial flexibility), data centers can adapt to the grid rather than overloading it. It’s an approach that avoids the need for expensive, off-grid microgrids that drive up equipment costs and starve public utilities of revenue. Instead, implementing modest flexibility can immediately unlock over 100 gigawatts of stranded grid capacity, ensuring American geopolitical competitiveness, lowering consumer energy rates, and creating a dynamic demand buffer to integrate more clean wind and solar energy. Critical Capital is a co-production of Crux and Latitude Studios. Learn more about how Crux is financing the future of energy.

  6. Jun 9

    The US-China rivalry runs through energy and minerals

    On today’s stage, China is the rising global power, and U.S. dominance is under threat. Geopolitical tensions like wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, combined with supply chain disruptions and a growing demand for rare earth minerals, continue to strain the relationship. But that relationship is key to the future of energy in the United States.   In this episode, Alfred Johnson talks with Harvard professor and geopolitical strategist Graham Allison. Together, they unpack the growing rivalry between the United States and China through the lens of the “Thucydides Trap,” a concept Graham popularized in his book “Destined for War.” The "Thucydides Trap" is the idea that when a rising power threatens an established one, conflict often follows.  Drawing on history and decades of foreign policy experience, Graham explains how today’s U.S.-China relationship resembles past global power struggles. He also explains how economic interdependence complicates the rivalry, and why energy, rare earth minerals, Taiwan, and global supply chains have become central geopolitical battlegrounds. Critical Capital is a co-production of Crux and Latitude Studios. Learn more about how Crux is financing the future of energy.

  7. May 26

    The clean energy transition has a hardware problem

    The electric grid is under pressure from every direction: surging demand from AI data centers, electrification, utility-scale renewables, and new industrial loads. But according to Drew Baglino, one of the biggest constraints isn’t generation, it’s the aging hardware that moves electricity across the system. In this episode, Alfred Johnson sits down with Drew Baglino, founder and CEO of Heron Power and former Tesla executive, to discuss why power electronics have become critical bottlenecks in the clean energy transition. After nearly two decades at Tesla leading powertrain, charging, and energy systems, Drew is now focused on rethinking the electrical infrastructure underlying the modern grid. Together, they dig into the explosive growth in electricity demand, the supply chain constraints facing medium-voltage transformers, and Heron Power’s effort to replace traditional transformer systems with software-enabled solid-state power electronics. Baglino explains how modular, semiconductor-based systems could make grids more reliable, easier to service, safer, and dramatically faster to deploy. Critical Capital is a co-production of Crux and Latitude Studios. Learn more about how Crux is financing the future of energy.

  8. May 7

    Can U.S. industrial trade policy stay on course?

    For decades, the United States bet on globalization: open markets, cheaper goods, and far-flung supply chains. But that model is breaking down. After pandemic disruptions and rising tensions with China, a new bipartisan consensus is emerging that America needs to rebuild its industrial base. The real question now isn’t whether to reshore critical industries, it’s whether the U.S. can do it consistently. In this episode, we sit down with Sarah Bianchi, former Deputy U.S. Trade Representative and current senior managing director at Evercore, to unpack the forces reshaping global trade, industrial policy, and investment. Drawing on decades inside Washington and firsthand experience negotiating trade deals, Sarah explains how we got here and why political volatility may be the biggest risk to America’s economic strategy. Critical Capital is a co-production of Crux and Latitude Studios. Learn more about how Crux is financing the future of energy.

  9. Apr 28

    Atoms, bits, and the trillion-dollar manufacturing race

    For 40 years, the U.S. economy has been optimizing itself for the digital world while exporting its physical manufacturing capabilities. Now, the rise of AI is leaving a massive physical footprint in the form of data centers, power plants, and supply chains. In this first episode of Critical Capital, Crux CEO and host Alfred Johnson sits down with Aidan Madigan-Curtis, partner at Eclipse Ventures, to discuss why the next generation of trillion-dollar companies will be built where "atoms and bits" connect. They trace the industrial arc from the Gilded Age to the modern age of physical AI, exploring the geopolitical "dance" with China and the radical energy shifts required to power the future along the way. And they ask: Who wins when the digital world runs headfirst into the physical one?  Critical Capital is a co-production of Crux and Latitude Studios. Learn more about how Crux is financing the future of energy.

  10. Season 1 Trailer

    Introducing: Critical Capital

    The future of energy isn’t shaped by technology alone. It’s shaped by markets, policy, capital flows, and the institutions that connect them. Trillions of dollars are moving into clean and critical infrastructure, across energy, advanced manufacturing, supply chains, AI, and digital infrastructure. But the forces driving those investments are complex, global, and often misunderstood. Alfred Johnson is the CEO of Crux, the capital platform for the clean economy. He has spent his career working at the intersection of finance, software, and public policy. On Critical Capital, Alfred talks with the people deploying capital, shaping policy, and laying the foundation for the modern economy. This is a show about how power moves across markets, institutions, and systems — and what that means for the future of energy. Episodes drop every other Tuesday, starting April 28. Subscribe to Critical Capital wherever you get your podcasts, or listen at cruxclimate.com.

Trailer

Ratings & Reviews

4.7
out of 5
50 Ratings

About

The future of energy is shaped by markets, policy, and capital flows — not just technology. Hosted by Crux CEO Alfred Johnson, Critical Capital explores the interlocking forces powering clean and critical infrastructure. The show features in-depth conversations at the intersection of energy, government, and global markets.

Information

  • Creator
    Crux and Latitude Studios
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    10
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Show Website
    Critical Capital

You Might Also Like