Beacon Power Services (BPS) is an energy-technology company building data and grid-management software for Africa's power sector. Its AI-enabled platforms - Adora for real-time grid monitoring, CAIMS for utility asset and customer data, and the Xepp consumer app - help electricity distributors cut losses, prevent outages and digitize networks. Founded by aerospace engineer turned investment banker Bimbola Adisa, BPS now serves utilities reaching more than 50 million people across Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Zambia and beyond, processing over a billion grid data points a day.
Quaise Energy is an MIT spinout commercializing millimeter wave drilling, a technique that uses powerful gyrotrons to vaporize rock and bore holes up to 20 km deep - far deeper than conventional bits can reach. The goal is to tap superhot geothermal heat (up to ~500 C) almost anywhere on Earth, turning geothermal into a scalable, carbon-free baseload power source that can be delivered through existing power plant infrastructure.
Terra AI is a Palo Alto geoscience company building generative AI that turns the messy, expensive guesswork of subsurface exploration into fast, probabilistic 3D models of what lies underground. By fusing geophysics, geochemistry, and drilling data, its platform generates millions of geological scenarios in minutes, helping mining and energy teams decide where to drill, how many wells they need, and whether a project is worth the capital - shrinking exploration timelines and pointing capital at the critical minerals the clean-energy transition depends on.
Zūm is a Redwood City, California company that has reinvented the most analog corner of education: the yellow school bus. It pairs an AI-driven routing and fleet-management platform with apps for parents, drivers and districts, then layers on a fast-growing fleet of electric buses with vehicle-to-grid charging that can sell power back to the grid. Serving roughly 4,500 schools and districts nationwide, Zūm turned a clipboard-and-radio industry into a connected, electrified mobility network.
Dennis Howard is CEO and President of GILLIG LLC, America's oldest surviving bus manufacturer and the second-largest heavy-duty transit bus maker in North America. Based in Livermore, California, GILLIG produces clean diesel, CNG, hybrid electric, battery electric, and hydrogen fuel cell buses that move millions of commuters across the United States daily. Under executive leadership, the company has leaned into the electric revolution - deploying fleets for King County Metro, PSTA, and dozens of transit agencies - while remaining a privately held American family business rooted in 135 years of craftsmanship.
Derek Maunus is the President and CEO of GILLIG LLC, America's oldest surviving bus manufacturer, founded in 1890 and now headquartered in Livermore, California. He joined GILLIG in 2011 and rose through roles in aftermarket parts and manufacturing before being appointed CEO in 2018. Under his leadership, GILLIG has expanded its clean-energy portfolio - including battery electric, hybrid, CNG, and hydrogen fuel cell buses - and executed a complex relocation from Hayward to a new 600,000 sq ft solar-powered facility in Livermore. With roughly 1,100 employees and annual revenue near $325M, GILLIG holds significant market share in North American heavy-duty transit bus manufacturing.
Equilibrium Energy is a San Francisco-based clean power company building PowerOS, an agentic AI platform purpose-built for the power industry. Its flagship product, EQ Mission Control, optimizes battery storage and renewables portfolios across US power markets, blending grid physics, market modeling, and AI copilots.
Heirloom Carbon Technologies is a San Francisco-based direct air capture company that uses limestone's natural CO2-absorbing properties to pull carbon dioxide permanently out of the atmosphere. Their process accelerates a geological phenomenon that normally takes thousands of years into a 3-day cycle: calcium oxide powder absorbs CO2 from ambient air, becomes limestone, gets heated in a renewable-energy-powered electric kiln to release the captured CO2, and repeats. The captured CO2 is then stored permanently underground or embedded in concrete. Founded in 2020, Heirloom opened America's first commercial DAC facility in Tracy, California in November 2023 and has raised over $354 million to expand capacity toward their goal of removing 1 billion tons of CO2 by 2035.
Chris Black is the CEO of GridX, Inc., an enterprise energy technology platform serving major US utilities. With nearly 30 years in technology and operations, he has been a central figure in the clean energy software sector - as CTO/COO at Tendril, he orchestrated the acquisitions that formed Uplight (now valued at $1.5B+), then invested via Huck Capital before taking the helm at GridX in April 2022 during its $40M Series C round. Under his leadership, GridX calculates 49 million bills daily, serves 40 million meters under contract, and models 1,000+ tariffs for utilities including PG&E, Southern California Edison, and ComEd.
Joe Gebbia co-founded Airbnb in 2008 out of a San Francisco living room - air mattresses, breakfast included - and turned a half-crazy idea into an $85B company. His current venture, Samara, builds factory-assembled, solar-ready backyard homes (ADUs) that go from permit to move-in in under seven months. In early 2025 he became America's first Chief Design Officer, tasked with redesigning the federal government's 27,000 websites. A Rhode Island School of Design graduate with dual majors in graphic and industrial design, Gebbia approaches every problem - housing affordability, government UX, refugee shelter - through the lens of democratic, empathetic design.
Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins is the co-founder and CEO of Promise, an Oakland-based govtech company valued at $520 million that helps municipalities and utilities offer zero-interest payment plans to struggling residents. A former union organizer turned labor federation executive turned music manager for Prince, she now runs a platform that has reached 5 million+ households across 20+ states, proving that treating people with dignity is not just ethical — it is a business model. Named #247 on the Forbes Self-Made 250, she built Promise from a YC Winter 2018 bet to a $23 million-funded company generating $33M+ in annual revenue.
Raef Sully is the CEO of Lilac Solutions, an Oakland-based company pioneering direct lithium extraction (DLE) technology using ceramic ion exchange beads. A structural engineer turned management consultant turned industrial executive, Sully brings 30+ years spanning tall buildings, the Australian Army Reserve, Bain & Company, and a decade running Nutrien's $10 billion nitrogen and phosphate division. He joined Lilac as COO in mid-2023 and ascended to CEO in February 2024 - the same month the company closed a $145 million Series C. Under his leadership, Lilac has achieved 87% lithium recovery at the Great Salt Lake, unveiled Gen 5 technology with 20x higher production rates, and signed a binding 10-year offtake agreement with Traxys North America targeting 50,000 tonnes of lithium product.
Ryan Hanley is the Founder and CEO of Equilibrium Energy, the company building PowerOS - an agentic AI platform purpose-built for the power industry. A civil engineer turned energy executive, Hanley spent nearly two decades inside the machine of grid transformation at PG&E, SolarCity, Tesla, and Shell before founding Equilibrium in 2021. With $100M+ raised and NRG Energy as a production customer, he is making a direct bet that AI can unify the fragmented data and systems that hold the power grid back.
Terabase Energy is a Berkeley, California company building the digital and automation backbone for utility-scale solar construction. Its flagship Terafab automated field factory and Construct software platform are designed to slash the cost and time of building solar power plants at terawatt scale.
Swift Solar is a San Carlos, California startup building perovskite tandem solar cells that aim to beat silicon on both efficiency and cost. Spun out of Stanford, MIT, Oxford and NREL in 2017, the company is now scaling toward gigawatt manufacturing in the United States after a $27M Series A and the 2026 acquisition of Meyer Burger's HJT manufacturing assets and patents.
Zach Robin is the CEO of Recurve, a San Francisco-based clean energy software company building the leading demand-side platform for utilities, aggregators, and implementers. A computer scientist turned energy entrepreneur, Zach has spent two decades at the intersection of software and grid modernization — from scaling product at EnerNOC through its Enel acquisition, to co-founding Hatch Data and growing it into North America's top real estate decarbonization platform (acquired by Measurabl), to now leading Recurve's FLEX platform, which manages 54 million meters nationwide and powers performance-based clean energy programs across the country.
Banks Hunter is the co-founder and CEO of Charge Robotics, a Berkeley-based startup building the world's first fully automated solar construction system. An MIT mechanical engineering alumnus and veteran of medical robotics startup Vicarious Surgical, Hunter co-founded Charge Robotics in 2021 with Max Justicz to solve one of clean energy's most stubborn bottlenecks: the physical, labor-intensive grunt work of assembling a utility-scale solar farm. His company's Sunrise system - a portable robotic assembly line shipped directly to job sites - autonomously puts together 800-pound solar bays and deploys them in the field, aiming to make solar installation as repeatable and scalable as factory production. Backed by Founders Fund, Lux Capital, Energy Impact Partners, and Y Combinator, Charge Robotics has raised over $39 million to accelerate the energy transition.
Patrick Sullivan is the Co-Founder and CEO of EV Realty, a San Francisco-based company building grid-scale private charging hubs for commercial electric truck fleets. Drawing on 15+ years developing nearly 9 GW of renewable energy projects at firms including Clearway Energy Group, NRG Energy, and BrightSource Energy, Sullivan identified that the real barrier to fleet electrification wasn't the trucks - it was the real estate and grid access. EV Realty's 'Powered Properties' model acquires strategically located industrial sites near freight corridors, locks in large grid capacity, and offers fleets reserved or on-route DC fast charging up to 1.2 MW. The company has raised over $103 million, including a $75M growth equity commitment from NGP in September 2025, and operates or has in development five charging hubs across California.
Steve Kelley is a serial clean-energy entrepreneur and CEO of L-Charge, the Sunnyvale-based pioneer of off-grid ultra-fast EV charging for commercial fleets. With six successful startup exits and over two decades building energy and mobility ventures, Kelley co-founded Green Charge Networks (acquired by Engie), scaled InCharge Energy's revenues nearly tenfold, and in October 2025 took the helm at L-Charge to push its grid-free Charging-as-a-Service model nationwide. Under his leadership, L-Charge closed a $10 million funding round in January 2026, enabling fleet operators to electrify in weeks rather than months by bypassing grid bottlenecks entirely.
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.
Anthony 'Tony' Stratakos is the co-founder and CEO of Element Energy, a West Menlo Park, California-based company pioneering adaptive battery management systems (BMS) that extend battery lifetimes by up to 50% and enable second-life repurposing of retired EV batteries for grid storage. A PhD electrical engineer from UC Berkeley, he previously co-founded Volterra Semiconductor in 1996 - a fabless power management IC company that went public in 2004 and was acquired by Maxim Integrated, where he rose to CTO before starting Element Energy in 2019. With $181.9M in total funding raised and a commissioned 53 MWh second-life battery storage project in Texas, Stratakos is building the infrastructure to make battery recycling obsolete.
Charles Cadieu is a serial entrepreneur and computational neuroscientist-turned-climate-tech founder. He is the Co-Founder and CEO of Spiritus, a direct air capture company aiming to slash the cost of carbon removal to $100 per ton - down from the current $600-$1,000 industry standard. Before Spiritus, Cadieu founded Caption Health (AI-guided cardiac ultrasound, acquired by GE HealthCare in 2023) and IQ Engines (AI image recognition, acquired by Yahoo!/Flickr in 2013). Holding a PhD from UC Berkeley and degrees from MIT, he bridges deep academic roots in neural networks with a track record of building and exiting companies that redefine their industries.
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.
Lesley Silverthorn Marincola is the founder and CEO of Angaza, a San Francisco-based B2B software company that powers pay-as-you-go financing for solar home systems and other off-grid products across emerging markets. A Stanford-trained product designer and mechanical engineer, she launched Angaza in 2010 after a course called 'Designing for Extreme Poverty' lit a fire she hasn't put out since. Today, Angaza's platform reaches over 5 million people across 50 countries, enabling low-income households to pay for life-changing energy products through weekly micropayments via mobile money — replacing kerosene lamps one $1 payment at a time. Her work earned Angaza the 2018 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship and a TED stage appearance. She is a Forbes '30 Under 30' alum, Echoing Green Fellow, and World Economic Forum Young Global Shaper.
Hermann Tribukait is the co-founder and CEO of Atinary Technologies, a Lausanne- and Silicon Valley-based deeptech startup that built SDLabs — a no-code AI/ML platform compressing years of R&D into days. A Harvard-trained economist who helped coin the term 'Self-Driving Labs®' in 2017, Tribukait has channeled a career spent brokering $200M+ in global R&D partnerships into software that lets machines design experiments, learn from results, and iterate without human bias getting in the way. Atinary's tools are now used in pharma, biotech, chemicals, and climate tech, with a physical self-driving lab open in Boston since early 2026.
Chamath Palihapitiya is a Sri Lankan-Canadian-American venture capitalist, founder of Social Capital, and co-host of the All-In Podcast. A former VP of User Growth at Facebook who helped scale the platform from 50M to 700M+ users, he left to build one of Silicon Valley's most distinctive investment firms. Known for contrarian takes, a welfare-to-billionaire origin story, and pioneering the 'growth hacking' playbook, he now manages $2.147B in AUM while running a top-ranked Substack newsletter and co-hosting one of tech's most listened-to podcasts.