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The Wallet Max team is hard at work planning and preparing for this year’s Emerald Summit & Bold World Awards Competition. And tickets are LIVE. Our themes this September are Fundraising Community and AI Sustainability, with a special emphasis on Enterprise Transformation. And we’re very excited to share the experience with you.

We are also still open for sponsors, startups, and volunteers. Consider joining us in making this one of the most exciting and interactive events of NYC Climate Week! And until the end of July, you can grab tickets at the best price.

In this issue, we also dive deep into the climate crisis and new tools for combatting its effects, the landscape of AI implementations, and how to plan for downturns. Send this to your friend or colleague who sees the intersection between technology and climate.

Great news: Early Bird pricing for the Emerald Summit on September 18, 2026 is available through July 31st.

👉 TODAY is your best shot at locking in the lowest rates before they're gone.

Presented by Wallet Max during Climate Week NYC, Emerald Summit brings together founders, investors, executives, and policymakers building the future of climate fintech. Last year's edition featured 45+ speakers and 15+ programs on topics including:

Our key Summit event featured 10-15 startups pitch competition judged by investors from firms like Anthemis Group and SOSV last year. Confirmed speakers and judges for this year include industry leaders like:

🎟️ Three ticket types are live now, each in limited supply:

👉 Get your tickets now: luma.com/EmeraldSummitWM26

🎤 Looking to Pitch?
Are you a founder? We're inviting startups in the below categories to pitch for the 2026 Wallet Max Awards. Deadline is August 10th.

➡️ Deep Tech / AI (Any Industry)
➡️ Fintech / Financial Services
➡️ Climate Tech / Sustainability
➡️ Clean Energy / Renewables
➡️ Social / Environmental Justice

Don’t wait! Our roster fills up fast 👉 Submit your interest here to pitch.

In this month's Women in AI conversation, as the host and Chief AI Ethics & Global Culture Officer of Women in AI, I sat down with Anna Jibgashvili, founder of Foundeon, an advisory firm helping enterprises scale AI without losing ownership of their institutional identity.

Anna describes that as AI moves from pilots into full enterprise adoption, "human in the loop" has been badly misunderstood. A person isn’t just rubber-stamping a model's output. Instead, the "human is the entire loop designer for what AI is supposed to do."

In other words: Humans need to define the guardrails, scope, and acceptable outcomes before AI ever touches a workflow, not review results after the fact.

Over the course of the conversation, Anna covers a wide range of topics, including:

Ethics isn't a constraint on AI transformation but the condition for surviving it. As she says, unethical organizations that don't put AI ethics at the forefront won't last.

Watch the recap here 👇

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine released its first update since 2016 on extreme weather attribution, concluding that human-caused warming has a "direct and well-understood impact" on heat waves, heavy rainfall, and dangerous wildfire weather, though localized events like severe thunderstorms remain harder to model.

Its report highlights that there has never been a more critical time to consider the intersection of climate and technology.

CBS News reported that roughly 40,000 U.S. forests alone are burning through 3.6 million acres during a prolonged drought. At least half of these fires are attributed to climate change. Over 3,500 additional fires in Canada drive up hazardous air quality across the Northern United States while displacing First Nation communities. The escalation is steep. 

In the panic of an emergency, it can be difficult to slow down. There is no “positive” to displacement and destruction, but we do have a new set of tools to fight climate change. 

Advancements in AI and mapping technology have enabled us to analyze, monitor, and prepare for extreme weather patterns, like this recent heatwave. For example, a new Spanish-developed tool called CADI maps how climate change could erode global farm productivity by 2100. Tropical regions and Spain's interior will be hit hardest, with up to half the world's population living in areas with significant agricultural losses by mid-century.

These tools can help us manage risks, prepare for the worst, and plan interventions to improve the outcome. 

And these solutions don’t exist in a vacuum. They come out of long periods of development, leader expertise, and climate-conscious community. Events like NYC Climate Week and Emerald Summit play a part in bringing people together to create effective tools and solutions to combating the climate crisis.

In episode 16 of Wallet Max's Planet Positive podcast, host Bhuva Shakti sits down with Jessie Lam, venture partner at AIM Partners, to trace a career that spans quantitative finance on Wall Street, hardware-focused venture investing in Hong Kong, and now an operating role at Provocative Science, an AI data-center company that captures carbon dioxide from GPU cooling systems and resells it to bars, restaurants, and stadiums. 

Jessie credits her cross-disciplinary path for sharpening her investment instincts, noting that early lessons in quantitative finance taught her the data is only as good as that you're putting it in.

“I'm an investor myself now, but I also started on Wall Street with finance, technology, and operating experience,” notes Jessie as she describes her ‘secret sauce’. “Experience is what gives us a different perspective. It’s not just investing money and expecting returns. You have better due diligence, you have better portfolio management.”

She shares hard-won lessons from over 70 portfolio companies, including a founder crisis that reshaped how she evaluates emotional maturity over raw "grit," and shares candid views on why venture capital's software-centric milestones fail hardware founders, arguing for debt financing tailored to industrial timelines. 

The interview also covers:

Furthermore, Jessie emphasizes empathy, specialization, and founder support as the real differentiators in impact investing - reminders that behind every capital decision are real people and real consequences. 

Listen to the full episode here 👇

The podcast is hosted by Wallet Max Founder & CEO Bhuva Shakti, and is for anyone interested in learning from investors and founders shaping thoughtful, practical solutions.

Want more than advice from investors? Check out our full podcast library, updated at the end of the month, every month.

More and more institutions are using AI technology, but implementation is still a messy business. Some companies are able to drive revenue, like Netflix, which recently admitted to using AI for 300 programs and hit $12.56 billion in earnings. They aren’t alone.

The Mayo Clinic doubled down on AI, running 150 AI models internally. One tool enables Mayo physicians to save 5-30 minutes per patient visit, while another trial tool aims to detect early-stage pancreatic cancer. But it’s not all positive. The former Mayo research operations director is suing the company, alleging retaliation over AI privacy concerns. 

There are real risks to the widespread use of AI. Rampant fraud is one example. 

In Georgia and South Florida, scammers are using voice cloning and deepfakes to impersonate attorneys, grandchildren, and trusted contacts. One couple from Georgia lost roughly $800,000 in a crypto scam. The FBI reports nearly $893 million in AI-enabled scam losses nationwide last year, with Florida ($39.9M) and Georgia ($10.4M) both seeing rising complaint counts. 

Governments are responding to the rapid AI growth, but not all at once and not with a standardized approach. 

Australian PM Anthony Albanese unveiled national AI standards requiring data centers to match their power consumption with generation and giving creators more control over AI training use of their work. In the United States, New York became the first state to impose a one-year pause on new permits for data centers using 50+ megawatts, citing utility costs and water strain. Meanwhile, Japan and NVIDIA launched what they call the world's first national AI infrastructure: a 140-megawatt "AI factory" built with Noetra Corp. to power physical AI, robotics, and manufacturing applications under Japan's FRONTia Project.

The complexities of AI governance can easily slow momentum for companies seeking growth. That is something I have intimate knowledge in, as I help founders and established organizations leverage AI with my AI Revenue Engine (AIRE™) program. 

Discover how you can adopt AI as a revenue driver here: www.bhuva.biz/aire

During the years when everything seemed to be going right, I learned to plan as if It could all go wrong. On Wall Street, the temptation was to ride the wave without looking too far ahead. But I had already seen enough to know that markets, like careers, are cyclical. 

I saw this up close in the early 2000s. Colleagues around me were celebrating record growth, convinced that the systems and models they had built were invincible. I remember raising “what if” questions when the room only wanted to talk about growth. What if the safety nets we trusted were weaker than we believed?

Preparation wasn’t about pessimism. It was about realism. That realism came from lived history. I had watched the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s ripple across economics, erasing fortunes overnight. I had also seen how quickly institutions pivoted to protect themselves, often leaving employees and customers exposed. 

Planning for the fall requires discipline. It sometimes means slowing down the momentum when everyone else wants speed. It means asking uncomfortable questions in rooms where optimism is rewarded. It allows you to take bigger risks with greater confidence, because you know you have a net beneath you. 

Ask yourself: If the success you’re experiencing now ended tomorrow, what would you wish you had in place? Build that now.

Discover more action tips for preparing for the fall in my free book preview 👇

In my upcoming book on risk, Everyday Risk Wisdom: Your Risk Management Guide to Thrive in a Complex World as an Overlooked Business Leader, I cover a variety of lessons from my career.

Explore my book website below and get notified when this lesson is available for free!

Planning for downturns isn’t always simple - the fall can be unexpected, a black swan event. It’s important to keep in mind that you aren’t planning for “everything” but creating an infrastructure that is simultaneously stronger and more flexible. 

Which strategy below is your primary way to plan for the worst, today?

Read the lesson for my “Prepare for the Fall, Even When Rising” action steps. Explore my book website below and get notified when this framework is available for free!

Few of us can ignore the drastic escalation of the climate crisis. The technology and communities we develop today can help us preserve the past and combat future risks. But it takes more than planning. One has to act, too.

Building community is often the most time-consuming aspect. It’s also the most helpful. Join us in September at Emerald Summit to tap into our community immediately and learn how you can better shape humanity’s answer to climate change. You can join as an attendee, a sponsor, startup, or volunteer, we’ll be thrilled to have you. 

Early bird tickets are available until July 31st. You won’t want to miss it! And I sincerely hope to see you there.

It takes a village to build a better world. And we’re grateful to have you as a part of our village at Wallet Max.

Thanks for supporting us to build a better world!

Bhuva Shakti, Founder of Wallet Max and Bhuva’s Impact Global.