Thomas Sisto

Thomas Sisto is the CEO and co-founder of XL Batteries, a Marlborough, Massachusetts startup commercializing water-based organic flow batteries for long-duration, grid-scale energy storage. A synthetic organic chemist by training, Sisto discovered the company's core molecule during a Columbia University postdoc - a compound he originally designed for solar cells that turned out to be extraordinarily stable in pH-neutral saltwater. He spun XL out of Columbia in 2019 and has since steered it from a lab curiosity to its first commercial pilot, betting that cheap, abundant organic chemicals can break China's grip on the battery supply chain.