Tech’s golden era may be coming to an end—but that’s not necessarily bad for all businesses, according to Azeem Azhar, a tech analyst, investor, and entrepreneur.

The past year has dealt blow after blow to the tech industry via a troublesome medley of market slowdowns, supply-chain issues, rising material costs, declining ad spend, and geopolitical uncertainty.

• Companies have responded with cost-cutting measures and broad-scale layoffs: More than 140,000 tech workers have lost their jobs in 2022, according to Layoffs.fyi, and companies from Alphabet to Amazon have made the decision to reallocate resources from forward-looking bets to more tried-and-true profit drivers.

But to Azhar...author of The Exponential Age: How Accelerating Technology Is Transforming Business, Politics and Society, the industry pullback may lead to a healthier environment for certain types of businesses.

“It was just never clear how many 10-minute delivery services were required, and it was never quite clear how small companies that had barely proven product-market fit could accommodate $200 million—$300 million of capital, which is what was starting to happen in the peak of it,” he told us. “So I think it actually presages a much healthier, and quite likely more innovative, period of time.”

We chatted with Azhar about the year’s most significant trends for tech and business and how those trends could play out in 2023. Read the full interview here.—HF

Automakers are no longer content with just your driveway or your garage—some want the whole house.

What’s new: Hyundai is the latest OEM to offer EV owners an entire home energy system, complete with solar panels and battery storage, following companies like Tesla and GM.

• The company rolled out Hyundai Home at the LA Auto Show last month, a platform that aims to make residential solar more accessible.

Global EV sales are set to more than triple between 2021 and 2025, but the emissions footprint of an EV is highly dependent on the carbon intensity of the electricity used to charge it. Renewable energy production reached a record high in the US last year, largely due to growth in wind and solar, but fossil fuels remain the largest source of electricity generation.

As the utilities continue to transform, outfitting EV owners with at-home solar and battery storage can immediately increase both the financial and environmental benefits of switching to electric.

Bottom line: The problem is that choosing among solar and battery storage options can be complicated, and the cost remains a barrier to entry for many people.

Automakers are hoping that their existing customer relationships and dealer networks can at least help them solve the issue of choosing a provider. Keep reading the full story here.—GD

Does Matter matter? The irresistibly punny question has become quite a bit more salient in the last few months, as the long-awaited smart-home standard finally went live.

So we decided to put it to you: Last week, over 1,300 Emerging Tech Brew readers let us know whether the arrival of an interoperable standard would make them more likely to buy smart-home products in the future. The results are in…

• Most respondents (48%) said nope, while 38% of respondents said yes.
• The remaining 14% said IDK.

FWIW, 39% of US households have at least one smart device, per research from CCS Insight cited by Axios.

Big picture: The allure of Matter is that it enables users to cobble together devices into whatever smart-home patchwork fits their needs.

With ~190 devices and 300+ companies signed up, including the biggest names in the space—Amazon, Apple, Samsung, and Google—the standard has the participants it needs to deliver on that promise. Now we’ll just have to see how well the standard does its job.

This week’s poll: Since last Wednesday, some onlookers have predicted that OpenAI’s ChatGPT language model spells the death of Google. So, do you think ChatGPT will disrupt Google’s search dominance?

Yes
No
IDK

Stat: TSMC formally announced plans to build a second advanced chipmaking facility in Arizona, bringing its total committed investment in the state from $12 billion to $40 billion. Here’s an in-depth look at the challenges of getting the first of those plants off the ground.

Quote: “[We’re] thinking about, ‘What are the application areas that we really don’t understand super well today?’ I think there’s going to be a class of things that are new, like any platform shift. Who could have predicted Airbnb in 2005?”—Brad Lightcap, COO of OpenAI and manager of the OpenAI Startup Fund, to Emerging Tech Brew

Read: For some kids, Roblox is supplanting one of the most timeless holiday gifts: cash.

Learn: Tired of trying to keep up with everything happening in your business? Learn how use the numbers with The Brew’s Data Storytelling course—a 1-week deep dive into building dashboards so you can make great decisions. Sign up now.

Objective obsessive: There’s a new secret potion brewing among big leaguers in tech—OKRs. Unfamiliar? Oracle NetSuite’s business guide will show you how objectives and key results frameworks can help you crush your goals. Learn more here.* 

Your portfolio on vacay: reAlpha is on a mission to make short-term rental property investing more accessible. Learn how they’re leveraging the vacation rental economy—and how you can, too—in this article.*

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Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions:

• OpenAI is also a startup investor—here’s its investment thesis
• 5G private networks are surging in popularity—here’s why
• Luminar’s quest to become a major auto supplier