How Elon Musk's former employees are building a climate tech startup ecosystem

For most of the time Musk was sleeping on the floor of Tesla's factory to oversee Model 3 assembly and his rockets were riding across the country on the back of flatbed trucks, the venture capitalists that fund the next generation of technology companies were largely avoiding capital-intensive hard tech startups.

While SpaceX founder and Tesla CEO Elon Musk is often lauded for turning technology like reusable rockets and American-made electric vehicles into thriving businesses in a way long thought impossible, he has also more quietly done something about as unlikely: get investors excited about capital-intensive hard tech startups.