Market Prompt, May: what the morning briefing misses ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ | Market Prompt: AI & Finance On noise, signal, and everything the morning briefing misses Lillian Freiberg Head of North America, Clarity AI May Issue “Nobody’s been laughing at me since gas hit five dollars.” A conversation with Logan Williams, Founder and Managing Partner of Odette Capital. This issue goes out four days before Memorial Day. That’s not why I chose Logan — but it’s not lost on me either. Logan Williams is on a Zoom call managing a burst pipe, a church landlord named Father Peter, and me — in that order of urgency. She is unbothered. This, it turns out, is a useful quality in energy finance. It is also, probably, a Coast Guard thing. Before Logan was in M&A or running her own shop, she served five years in the United States Coast Guard off the Oregon coast. She went in thinking she’d do law enforcement. She ended up in a civil engineering unit. The world had other plans, and so did she. She founded Odette Capital to serve the needs of developers nobody else is paying attention to — founding teams of two or five people building utility-scale power plants, too small for bulge bracket banks. We talked about subsidies, policy whiplash, what keeps the lights on when the grid goes down, and why she doesn’t care what you call ESG as long as you’re actually doing it. What made you build a business around this? Oftentimes these developers are too small or early-stage to be interacting with a larger investment bank. But they could benefit from somebody who, you know, has the expertise they need and that targets more of the middle market. One of our clients is a team of five — they’re developing essentially a waste-to-oil facility. The other is just a founding team of two. They’re still building very sizable power plants. There’s institutional interest in their assets. But they’re just not big institutions themselves. We want to grow with our clientele. Coast Guard. Goldman. EDP Renewables. Your own firm. Walk me through the through-line. I really thought I was going to be doing drug interdiction. And I ended up at a civil engineering unit. She laughs — catches herself — moves on. The pivot is fast. Funny how the world works. We were installing batteries and solar panels onto these huge range lights — placed miles apart along the Oregon coast. I started to see how that was important, you know, not just environmentally, but to infrastructure more broadly. Then at Columbia, I got pulled into the largest student-managed hedge fund on campus and realized financial services intersect with every major strategic sector. Once I saw it intersected with solar, that was the moment. What do investors consistently get wrong about energy infrastructure? The underlying asset has real operating risk. If a wind turbine catches on fire, that’s going to materially impact the economics and overall investment opportunity. And then — policy whiplash. When a framework like the IRA has been in place for several years, people may start to treat it as a stable part of the market. One example is people who built business plans around greenhouse gas emissions funding that was frozen this past February. You can be strategic around subsidies. But it’s never good for that to be the underlying of your business plan. “Building business plans around subsidies is never a good idea. The political environment shifts. And then the whole thing falls apart." She’s gone somewhere for a second — a deal, a conversation she’s had too many times. Then she’s back. Is the ESG acronym dead? A lot of acronyms became highly politicized, particularly in the U.S., where people adjust their positioning depending on the political climate. But ESG is still very strong and relevant in Europe — it doesn’t experience this policy whiplash the way it has in the US. She leans in slightly. The warmth is still there, but the point is coming whether you’re ready or not. Even for people who don’t want to hear the word, if they really think about what looking at things from an ESG lens means, it means looking at things from a risk management lens. Environmental risk, social risk, governance. It’s what is supposed to ensure that companies with enormous power in the system aren’t just chasing short-term profits and ignoring risk. Overrated · Underrated · Inevitable My read — every issue, with a guest take. Overrated The fossil fuel industry — entirely. “We are always going to need a liquid source of fuel. But fossil fuels get a huge amount of attention. I just think it’s really overhyped considering the risks that concentrating our energy source there poses, especially from a national security perspective. Look at Europe.” Underrated Energy from diverse resources. “These renewable technologies are no longer just about ESG or saving the environment — they are actually one of the most practical ways to improve energy security, reduce exposure to fuel-price volatility, and strengthen grid resilience. I drive a Tesla, and I get a lot of flak from family members.” The grin arrives before the punchline. “Nobody has been laughing at me over the last few months when the price of gas has been north of five dollars.” Inevitable Constantly increasing power demand. “AI is one driver, quantum computing is next. And if they figure out fusion — fusing atoms together, essentially how the sun makes power — that will be a huge game changer. Power demand is going to keep increasing as we advance as a society technologically.” Further reading from Clarity AI AI Strategy for Financial Services: What’s Actually Working in 2026 What AI Adoption Really Looks Like in Finance: A Conversation at the NYSE How AI Transforms Investment Workflows and Why Data Quality Determines Whether It Holds Up Next issue Is ESG a dead acronym — or just a rebranding in progress? Next issue, I’m sitting down with Paula Luff, from DSC Meridian Capital to find out. Lillian Freiberg is Head of North America at Clarity AI, where she leads commercial growth and strategic partnerships with asset managers and institutional investors. She holds a degree from Barnard College, where she studied English Literature alongside Economics and Mandarin. View it in browser This email and any attachments are CONFIDENTIAL and are addressed only for the intended recipient unless stated otherwise. If received in error, any dissemination or copying of this communication is prohibited. Please notify immediately the sender by return email, and delete this email and any attachments from your system. Clarity AI Inc. and its affiliates, (Clarity AI Europe S.L. acting as EU representative), may process the personal data within this email. You may exercise your data subject rights by contacting privacy@clarity.ai or checking our Data Protection Policy for more information. Copyright © Clarity AI, All rights reserved. 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