Breakthrough Energy✓

Energy powers prosperity. The innovation pipeline is stronger than ever. As founders, investors, and partners gather in Houston for the BEV Investor Summit, we’ll focus on what it takes to scale companies that can deliver affordable, reliable, clean energy across the world’s largest industries.

We’re extending our BE Fellows – SEA program through 2030 with @Temasek and Enterprise Singapore, alongside new corporate partners @OlamAgri_, @pertamina NRE, PTT ExpresSo NB. The region pairs fast-growing energy demand with deep technical talent. This extension gives more early-stage builders a clearer path from breakthrough science to companies that scale.

We’re looking for the next great builders everywhere. Applications for our next global cohort of BE Fellows close November 2:

Contrail avoidance is one part of the aviation innovation we’re backing at Breakthrough, and one with real potential for near-term impact.

More copper doesn’t always have to mean more mines. BE Fellow Giraffe Bio just raised a new seed round to advance biomolecules that could help existing mines recover up to 5% more copper.

Our next cohort of BE Fellows is looking for builders with early-stage climate technologies that could reshape major industries. If that sounds like what you’re working on, apply by November 2:

Synthetic fuel at aviation scale will take a different kind of plant. @BillGates and Lydian CEO Joe Rodden explain how smaller facilities designed for replication and mass production could help get there.

Batteries are great, until you need to cross an ocean. Eric Toone explains why energy density keeps liquid fuels at the center of long-haul flight, and how the @traveloneworld BEV Fund is backing better ways to make them.

From BE Fellow to breaking ground on a U.S. steel facility. @HerthaMetals started in our first cohort. Cohort 7 applications are open now:

SAF is only one piece of the liquid fuels opportunity. Our Executive Director Rodi Guidero looks at how technologies like natural hydrogen, cheaper electrolysis, and new fuel pathways—and hard-earned expertise from oil and gas—can help build the next generation of fuels.

Algae could help fuel the future of flight. Our founder @BillGates shares how Phykion is engineering oil-rich algae to produce more of the feedstock SAF needs—using sunlight, CO2, seawater, and existing HEFA refining infrastructure.

Hard markets make better companies. Our CIO @carmichaelvc on how the Lydian and Phykion teams are building for aviation, and why the right partners can change the trajectory.

25 MW. Up to 50 hours. @fourthpowerinc is building thermal batteries designed to keep reliable power flowing when demand spikes. Its first demonstration system is now under construction in Massachusetts.

Big energy companies can start as small ideas in labs: The BE Fellows program helps early-stage builders move faster with up to $500k in R&D support, hands-on technical guidance, mentorship, and access to a global network. Cohort 7 applications are open through November 2.

SAF won’t win on chemistry alone. It has to win on cost. Our CTO Eric Toone looks at how Lydian and Phykion—the first investments from our oneworld BEV Fund—are attacking that challenge from two very different directions, and what it will take to compete at aviation scale.

Nearly half of the companies on @techreview's Climate Tech Companies to Watch list are backed by Breakthrough. @BrimstoneEnergy, @FormEnergyInc, @fervoenergy, and Energy Dome. Four builders taking on some of energy’s hardest problems.

Long-haul flight still depends on fossil-based liquid fuels. The opportunity is to make better ones that can compete on cost. Phykion is using algae to do exactly that. Rodi Guidero explains why making the economics work is key.

Better flight is going to take new fuels and aircraft. But some progress doesn’t have to wait. Small route changes on a small share of flights could avoid most of the heat-trapping clouds planes leave behind, using today’s aircraft and fuels. @BillGates explains how.

Cars can electrify. Long-haul aviation is a much tougher problem. Our founder @BillGates on why better liquid fuels will be essential, and what it will take to make them without adding more CO2 to the atmosphere.

AI needs a lot more power, and better ways to move it. @VEIR_Grid just raised a $110M Series C to scale superconducting systems designed to beat conventional power delivery on space, materials, and cost.

OpenGrid is here. The new initiative from the @linuxfoundation grew from @BillGates’ push for better tools to guide energy infrastructure decisions—and was incubated through our GRIDS program. Reliable electricity enables health, jobs, and economic growth. OpenGrid is bringing open-source innovation to grid planning so more countries can build the infrastructure to deliver it.