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PowerLight Technologies
PowerLight Technologies is a Kent, Washington-based engineering company that transmits electricity through the air using lasers. Spun out of the original LaserMotive (founded 2006 by Tom Nugent and Jordin Kare), PowerLight builds end-to-end power beaming systems that keep drones flying for hours, relay energy across kilometers of free space, and underpin DARPA initiatives for terrestrial, aerial, and lunar power transmission.
Tim Jenks
Tim Jenks is the Interim CEO of PowerLight Technologies, a Kent, Washington-based company pioneering laser-based wireless power beaming for drones, defense systems, and space infrastructure. A U.S. Naval Academy graduate with a nuclear engineering master's from MIT and an MBA from Stanford, Jenks spent over two decades building NeoPhotonics from a venture-backed startup into a NYSE-listed company before selling it to Lumentum Holdings for approximately $918 million in 2022. Now he's steering PowerLight through a pivotal moment: in April 2026, the company achieved the world's first wireless power beaming to a fielded military drone in flight, delivering kilowatt-class laser energy to a Kraus Hamdani Aerospace K1000ULE at 5,000 feet altitude - a breakthrough that could redefine how unmanned aircraft operate in contested environments.