cleantech-founder
(7)
Christopher Gosline
Christopher Gosline was the co-founder and first CEO of SYSO Technologies, a Boston company that turns passive solar, wind, and battery projects into active participants in wholesale power markets. Before SYSO, he ran a $100M+ software business at demand-response pioneer EnerNOC and helped build BlueWave Solar as a senior vice president. Trained in geographic information systems and energy policy, he spent more than two decades pushing toward a grid that runs without fossil fuels, and was known as much for the team he built as for the funding rounds he closed.
Benjamin Cook
Benjamin Cook is the founder, CEO and board chairman of Zirconia Inc., a Tukwila, Washington advanced-materials company building water-borne ceramic coatings that chemically bond to concrete and steel at room temperature - effectively turning aging infrastructure into something close to liquid granite. A self-described green technologist with three decades of cleantech ventures behind him, Cook trades on a single conviction: the cheapest and greenest building is the one you never have to tear down. Before Zirconia he founded GeoTree Technologies, an underground-pipe restoration firm sold for a 5x investor return, and earlier still he traded a planned career in pediatric medicine for a life spent removing toxins from the built environment.
Lukas Hackl
Lukas Hackl is the co-founder and CEO of Aepnus Technology, an Emeryville, California startup building electrolyzers that turn sodium sulfate waste - a salty byproduct piling up across the EV battery supply chain - back into the sulfuric acid and caustic soda that battery makers have to buy. The technology grew out of his UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory PhD work on electrochemical water desalination. After hearing the same waste complaint on road trips from California to Canada, he and co-founder Bilen Akuzum turned a laboratory curiosity into a company that emerged from stealth in 2024 with $8 million in seed funding led by Clean Energy Ventures.
Ryan Li
Ryan Li is the co-founder and CEO of Revert Technologies, a climate-tech company building AI-powered smart power adapters that hunt down 'phantom load' - the electricity devices waste while switched off. A chemical engineer turned energy operator, Li drilled deep-sea wells for Shell, designed green hydrogen plants, and ran Alibaba's US SMB business before building hardware in Maine that he describes as 'the easiest energy decision you'll ever make.' His company measures its own success in one unit: tons of CO2 removed.
Sami Khan
Sami Khan is the co-founder and CEO of Nevoya, an all-electric, AI-orchestrated freight carrier building a zero-emissions trucking network from the ground up. A Cambridge-trained physicist who moved through private equity, Accenture consulting, and four years inside McLaren's applied-technology arm, Khan launched Nevoya in 2022 to prove that electric trucks can beat diesel on cost, reliability, and emissions. The company raised a $9.3M seed led by Lowercarbon Capital, runs Freightliner eCascadias for Fortune 500 shippers and 3PLs, and is built around a proprietary AI-powered Transportation Management System designed specifically for the quirks of running EVs at freight scale.
Brian Bauer
Brian Bauer is the co-founder, president, and CEO of Resynergi, a Rohnert Park, California advanced-recycling company turning hard-to-recycle plastic into fuel and chemical feedstock with Continuous Microwave Assisted Pyrolysis (CMAP). A Stanford-trained mechanical engineer who spent 25 years in telecom and semiconductors, Bauer co-founded Resynergi in 2015 with longtime colleague Jason Tanne after a decade of conversations about green technology. His pitch: microwaves heat plastic roughly 10-20 times faster than conventional pyrolysis, in a modular system small enough to deploy near the waste itself. In 2025, a partnership with Lummus Technology brought Resynergi's modules to commercial availability.
Josh Browne
Josh Browne is the co-founder and CEO of M2X Energy, a Rockledge, Florida climate-tech company that converts wasted methane from flares and landfills into low-carbon methanol using modular, truck-transportable gas-to-liquids systems built around repurposed internal-combustion engines. M2X grew out of his Columbia PhD dissertation, was founded in 2020 by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and raised a $40 million Series B in 2024 (about $62.5 million total). Before M2X, Browne founded a data-science firm, Rho AI, that was acquired by General Motors. He started as the company's CTO and now runs it as CEO.