Bill Gates and Breakthrough Energy: Accelerating viability at the SOSV Climate Tech Summit
Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, discusses the challenges of investing in clean technology. The physical economy has been optimized over centuries, and R&D on changing it is extremely low. To get to zero, people are recognizing the need to do the hard stuff, not just the passenger cars or a little bit of renewable generation. Breakthrough energy ventures work better in finding good ideas and developing those ideas and getting co-investors. Venture capitalists remember the Clean Tech Boom that burst about a decade ago, and the risks that this one could burst too. Just to do pilot projects, there’s a valley of death where you often need up to $1 billion to prove out efficiency and quality at scale. We have about 10 years to invent these things and prove them through pilot projects.
