William Henry Gates III is an American businessperson, investor, and philanthropist best known for co-founding the software giant Microsoft, along with his childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), president, and chief software architect, while also being its largest individual shareholder until May 2014. He was a major entrepreneur of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s.
Vinod Khosla is an Indian-American businessman and venture capitalist. He is a co-founder of Sun Microsystems and the founder of Khosla Ventures. Khosla made his wealth from early venture capital investments in areas such as networking, software, and alternative energy technologies. He is considered one of the most successful and influential venture capitalists.
L. John Doerr is an American investor and venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins in Menlo Park, California. In February 2009, Doerr was appointed a member of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board to provide the President and his administration with advice and counsel in trying to fix America's economic downturn. In 2017, related to Forbes, he was recognized the 40th Richest in Tech. Forbes ranked Doerr as the 196th richest person in the world, with a net worth of US$ 9.8 billion as of April 12, 2023. Doerr is the author of Measure What Matters, a book about goal-setting, and Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now.
XPRIZE foundation is a non-profit organization that designs and hosts public competitions intended to encourage technological development to benefit humanity. The XPRIZE mission is to bring about "radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity" through incentivized competition. It fosters high-profile competitions to motivate individuals, companies, and organizations across all disciplines to develop innovative ideas and technologies that help solve the world's challenges.
Clean technology, in short cleantech or climatetech, is any process, product, or service that reduces negative environmental impacts through significant energy efficiency improvements, the sustainable use of resources, or environmental protection activities. Clean technology includes a broad range of technology related to recycling, renewable energy, information technology, green transportation, electric motors, green chemistry, lighting, grey water, and more. Environmental finance is a method by which new clean technology projects can obtain financing through the generation of carbon credits. A project that is developed with concern for climate change mitigation is also known as a carbon project.
The Virgin Earth Challenge was a competition offering a $25 million prize for whoever could demonstrate a commercially viable design which results in the permanent removal of greenhouse gases out of the Earth's atmosphere to contribute materially in global warming avoidance. The prize was conceived by Richard Branson, and was announced in London on 9 February 2007 by Branson and former US Vice President Al Gore.
Jeffrey Brian Straubel is an American businessman and electrical engineer. He spent 15 years at Tesla, as chief technical officer until moving to an advisory role in July 2019. In 2023, he was elected to the company's board of directors.
Alan E. Salzman is an American venture capitalist and managing partner. He is the co-founder, CEO and Managing Partner of VantagePoint Capital Partners, a venture capital firm in the U.S. and an investor in clean technology companies.
Stripe, Inc. is an Irish multinational financial services and software as a service (SaaS) company headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. The company primarily offers payment-processing software and application programming interfaces for e-commerce websites and mobile applications.
Bill Maris is an American entrepreneur and venture capitalist focused on technology and the life sciences. Bill Maris's investments have to date resulted in over 150 exits and more than 50 companies that have grown to over $1B in value, including: Aurora Innovation, Nest, Uber, Crowdstrike, Coinbase, 23andme, Flatiron Health, Foundation Medicine, The Climate Corporation, Vir and Auris. He is the founder and first CEO of Google Ventures (GV) and also served as VP of Special Projects at Google/Alphabet. He is the creator of Google's Calico project, a company focused on the genetic basis of aging. He is the founder of early web hosting pioneer Burlee.com, now part of Web.com, and the founder of Section 32, a California-based venture fund focused on frontier technology.
The Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) is an Australian Government-owned green bank that invests alongside private investors, innovators and industry leaders to increase the flow of finance into the clean energy sector, and to help achieve Australia's national goal of net zero emissions by 2050.
Mission Innovation is a global initiative to accelerate public and private clean energy innovation to address climate change, make clean energy affordable to consumers, and create green jobs and commercial opportunities.
Carbon Engineering Ltd. is a Canadian-based clean energy company focusing on the commercialization of direct air capture (DAC) technology that captures carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere.
Nathaniel Simons is an American billionaire hedge fund manager and philanthropist. He is the founder of Meritage Group, an investment management firm managing over $12 billion in assets, co-founder of Prelude Ventures, a clean tech investment fund, and is the former co-chair of Renaissance Technologies, one of the largest hedge funds in the world.
Deep technology or hard tech is a classification of organization, or more typically startup company, with the expressed objective of providing technology solutions based on substantial scientific or engineering challenges. They present challenges requiring lengthy research and development, and large capital investment before successful commercialization. Their primary risk is technical risk, while market risk is often significantly lower due to the clear potential value of the solution to society. The underlying scientific or engineering problems being solved by deep tech and hard tech companies generate valuable intellectual property and are hard to reproduce.
Climeworks AG is a Swiss company specializing in direct air capture (DAC) technology. The company filters CO2 directly from the ambient air through an adsorption-desorption process. At its first commercial direct air capture and storage plant, Orca, in Hellisheidi, Iceland, the air-captured CO2 is handed over to storage partner Carbfix, who injects it deep underground where it mineralizes and turns into stone. Climeworks’s machines run on renewable energy or energy-from-waste and re-emit less than 10% of the carbon dioxide they capture.
Turntide Technologies is a US-based business that makes intelligent, sustainable motor systems. Turntide applies its Technology for Sustainable Operations across buildings, agriculture, and transportation segments. It maintains operations in the US, Canada, the United Kingdom, and India.
Ambri, Inc. is an American startup company which aims to produce molten-salt batteries for energy storage in wind and solar power systems. In 2016 it had thirty-seven employees.
The Climate Pledge Fund is a division of Amazon, set up to develop and manage investments in the climate technology space, as part of its Climate Pledge initiative. It is a corporate venture capital fund.
CarbonCure Technologies is a manufacturer of carbon removal or carbon utilization technologies that inject captured carbon dioxide into concrete where it is permanently stored. The company was founded in 2012 by Robert Niven, and the company headquarters are in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
