bill-gates
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Barclay Rogers
Barclay Rogers is the co-founder and CEO of Graphyte, a carbon removal company that turns waste biomass into dense, dehydrated carbon blocks and buries them to keep CO2 out of the atmosphere for over a thousand years. A former environmental lawyer and mechanical engineer turned multi-time agtech and climate founder, he built Graphyte's 'Carbon Casting' process to deliver durable carbon removal at under $100 a ton, an order of magnitude cheaper than direct air capture. The company is backed by Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures and runs its first commercial plant in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Rogers also teaches a climate change solutions course as an adjunct professor of law at Tulane University.
Kathleen Alexander
Kathleen Alexander is co-founder and CEO of Savor, a San Jose-based food-tech startup that makes butter, palm oil, and cocoa butter alternatives from carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and oxygen - no animals, no plants, no farmland. Backed by Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Synthesis Capital with $33 million raised, Savor commercially launched its carbon-synthesized butter in March 2025 and was recognized in TIME's Best Inventions of 2025. Alexander holds a PhD in Materials Science & Engineering from MIT and is a 2013 Hertz Fellow who grew up in Corvallis, Oregon - famously starting college at 16, dropping out, attending community college, and ultimately earning her doctorate at MIT.
Kurt House
Kurt Zenz House is the Co-Founder and CEO of KoBold Metals, an AI-driven mineral exploration company backed by Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Andreessen Horowitz. A Harvard-trained earth scientist and serial energy entrepreneur, he built KoBold from the ground up to solve one of the most consequential problems of the energy transition: finding enough copper, cobalt, lithium, and nickel to power a decarbonized world. Under his leadership, the company discovered the Mingomba deposit in Zambia - potentially the most significant copper find in a century - and raised over $1 billion to develop it. Before KoBold, he founded C12 Energy (CO2-based enhanced oil recovery) and Phase Change Resources (natural gas asset acquisition), and held research and teaching roles at MIT and Stanford.
Ann Winblad
Ann Winblad is a Silicon Valley legend who bootstrapped her first software company with $500 borrowed from her brother, sold it for $15 million, then co-founded the world's first venture capital firm exclusively dedicated to software in 1989. Over 30+ years at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, she backed 160+ enterprise software companies - including first-institutional-investor bets on MuleSoft (acquired by Salesforce for $6.5B) and Omniture (acquired by Adobe for $1.8B) - while becoming the most influential female venture capitalist of her generation.