breakthrough-energy
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Kristin Brief
Kristin Brief is the CEO of Terragia Biofuel, a Hanover, New Hampshire startup engineering thermophilic bacteria to turn farm leftovers into cost-competitive, low-carbon ethanol. A 20-year clean energy operator and former Breakthrough Energy Fellow, she previously co-founded medical diagnostics company Virex Health, which was acquired by Sorrento Therapeutics.
Molten Industries
Molten Industries is an Oakland, California climate-hardware startup that uses methane pyrolysis to crack natural gas into clean hydrogen and high-value synthetic graphite, with no carbon dioxide emitted in the process. Founded in 2021 by Dr. Caleb Boyd and Dr. Kevin Bush, the company aims to onshore battery supply chains and decarbonize heavy industry by producing battery-grade graphite for lithium-ion cells and low-cost clean hydrogen for fuels, ammonia, plastics, and green steel. It raised a $25M Series A in June 2024 led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures to build its first modular commercial reactor.
Kurt Tsuo
Kurt Tsuo is the Chief Business Officer of Varaha, a Gurugram-based carbon removal company building high-integrity credits with smallholder farmers across Asia and Africa. A Harvard-trained economist who spent seven years in agriculture before it was a climate headline, he has built business lines at the Gates Foundation, Farmer's Business Network, ProducePay, and Breakthrough Energy, and co-founded the carbon storage startup Graphyte. His through-line is unglamorous and stubborn: make the economics of fixing carbon work for the people who actually grow food.
Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell is the CEO and Co-Founder of Terabase Energy, a Berkeley-based company building the digital and automation platform for utility-scale solar. After 15 years at SunPower working across 200+ projects in 20 countries, he launched Terabase from his basement during the pandemic in 2019 - and within three months had secured an 800 MW project in Qatar. Today, backed by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Breakthrough Energy Ventures with $207M raised, Terabase's Terafab robotic assembly line is deploying solar at 2-minute cycle times, targeting 24/7 autonomous construction and a future where solar hits one cent per kilowatt-hour.
Savor
Savor is a San Jose food-tech company making real fats - butter, oils, cocoa-butter analogues - from carbon, hydrogen and oxygen instead of cows, palms or coconuts. Backed by Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures, it commercialised its first carbon-derived butter in 2025.
Ted McKlveen
Ted McKlveen is the Co-Founder and CEO of Verne, a San Francisco-based clean energy company pioneering cryo-compressed hydrogen (CcH2) technology to decarbonize heavy-duty transportation and off-grid power. He graduated summa cum laude in Chemistry from Harvard and earned an MBA from Stanford GSB (2021), where he co-founded Verne. Under his leadership, Verne unveiled the world's first CcH2 Class 8 heavy-duty truck, secured backing from Amazon's Climate Pledge Fund and United Airlines Ventures, raised $15.5M total, and expanded into a new Pennsylvania manufacturing facility creating 61 jobs.
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.