Just more than a year after its inception, the Bill Gates-led Breakthrough Energy Coalition appears to be putting its money where its mouth is. Gates and his fellow millionaire and billionaire investors announced Monday the formation of the Breakthrough Energy Ventures fund, a $1 billion fund committed to making “risk-tolerant investments in next generation technologies to provide reliable, affordable, zero-carbon energy, food, and products to the world.”
The Breakthrough Energy Coalition is a private-sector investment effort with participants including Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Richard Branson of the Virgin Group, Tom Steyer of NextGen Climate, Meg Whitman of Hewlett-Packard, and Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan of Facebook and the Primary School, respectively. The coalition “is committed to helping accelerate the cycle of innovation through investment, partnership, and thought leadership,” according to its website.
The new Breakthrough Energy Ventures fund is an “investment vehicle” intended for the members of the Breakthrough Energy Coalition to invest in “science focused, patient, and flexible capital in new companies that show promise to fulfilling the BEC mission,” according to the fund website.
A number of Breakthrough Energy Coalition members, including Bezos and Branson, have also joined the fund.