Sujeet Kumar is the co-founder and CEO of Ionblox, a Fremont, California battery company building pre-lithiated silicon-anode lithium-ion cells for electric vehicles and electric aviation. A materials scientist with a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester and more than 60 patents to his name, he previously served as CTO of Envia Systems, where his team developed one of the first 400 Wh/kg lithium-ion cells with a silicon anode. Ionblox, formerly Zenlabs Energy, has raised roughly $32 million in Series B funding from backers including Lilium, Applied Ventures, Temasek and Catalus Capital, and markets cells that promise higher energy density, up to five times more power, and 10-minute fast charging.

Dr. Edward O. Shaffer II is the CEO and founder of Advanced Battery Concepts, a Clare, Michigan company he started in 2009 to reinvent the 160-year-old lead-acid battery instead of chasing lithium. His patented GreenSeal bipolar architecture strips cost, lead and weight out of large-format storage while keeping the batteries fully recyclable, and it has been licensed to battery makers around the world including Crown, Clarios, EnerSys, Exide, Trojan and Monbat. An MIT-trained materials scientist and former Dow Chemical R&D manager, Shaffer argues that energy storage only scales when it is economically, socially and environmentally responsible - all three at once.