Energy is at the heart of one of the biggest transformations humanity has ever faced.
While the public debate still revolves around the power consumption of artificial intelligence data centers, Breakthrough Energy, the organization founded by Bill Gates, already has its eye on a much bigger picture. And here is what makes it interesting: for them, data centers represent only about a 10% increase on top of an electricity demand that has stayed essentially flat for the past 30 years. That sounds like a lot, but according to Eric Toone, managing partner at Breakthrough Energy Ventures, data centers are really the canary in the coal mine. They signal something much larger on the horizon: a massive surge in global electricity demand. 🌍
That surge is projected to explode as countries electrify entire sectors of their economies to curb carbon emissions. In Toone’s own words, electrifying everything means a threefold increase in electricity demand. In other words, the current scramble for energy sources is going to look like child’s play compared to what is coming in the next few decades. It is a scenario that completely changes the game for any company, government, or technology that depends on energy generation, transmission, and storage.
And that is exactly where the startups selected for the sixth edition of the Breakthrough Energy Fellows program come in. These are 21 companies betting on technologies ranging from nuclear fusion to hydrogen via ammonia, along with more efficient semiconductors and even robotics for deep-sea mining. 🌊 TechCrunch got exclusive access to this new cohort, and every one of these companies shares a common mission: helping the world deal with an energy future that is arriving much faster than most people realize.
The Program Redefining the Race for Decarbonization
The Breakthrough Energy Fellows is not your typical accelerator. Created with the explicit goal of funding early-stage climate technologies, the program backs projects that the traditional venture capital market still considers too risky to touch. The logic is straightforward, and Toone sums it up well: they are always right on the line between not funding silly things and making big bets in the hope of getting big returns. That philosophy is what unites the 21 startups in this new cohort, each one working on fronts that go well beyond what technology headlines usually cover.
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Worth noting is that this is the first class announced since Ashley Grosh stepped down from leading the Fellows program to become a partner at WovenEarth Ventures. During this transition period, senior director Benjamin Gaddy is serving as interim director while the organization figures out its next steps. Even with the leadership change, this cohort has kept the formula that defined previous years, proving that the program’s DNA remains intact.
What makes this edition particularly interesting is the diversity of approaches. This is not just about cheaper solar panels or better wind turbines — those are important solutions, but they already have established players in the market. Here we are talking about technologies that still need to prove they work at scale, like fusion reactors, next-generation heat management systems, and new ways to produce and transport hydrogen in an economically viable way. Breakthrough Energy is, in practice, funding the future before it becomes obvious to everyone else.
Another thing that stands out is the explicit acknowledgment that full decarbonization is not going to happen as fast as the most optimistic scenarios predicted. As Toone himself admitted, a lot of people expected we would be able to decarbonize faster than we actually have. It is going to take longer and be harder than anyone imagined, and that leads directly to the need for adaptation. It is not pessimism — it is strategic realism.
Nuclear Fusion and the Boldest Bets in the Cohort
Some of the companies in this class are, without a doubt, bold bets. Among them is Borealis Fusion, a startup pursuing fusion energy using proton-boron fuel. This material is widely available, but it comes with a huge challenge: it is extremely difficult to heat it to the temperatures needed to ignite fusion reactions. Even though it is a long-term, high-risk bet, the potential is enormous. According to Gaddy, if they can make it work, it could lead to a much lower cost of energy.
Another startup on the same front is StarWarden, which is working on heat management technology for future fusion reactors. This is one of those engineering problems that rarely makes headlines but is absolutely critical. Without an efficient way to handle the extreme heat generated by fusion reactions, no reactor can operate sustainably. It is the kind of invisible piece that can determine the success or failure of an entire technology.
Nuclear fusion, which for decades was treated as the eternal promise that never delivered, is going through a moment of real momentum. A startup in this space, with access to the Breakthrough Energy ecosystem and its funding, can accelerate stages that would normally take decades inside government labs. The risk is high, but the potential payoff for the global energy system is proportional. ⚡
Semiconductors, Efficiency, and the Impact Nobody Sees
Not every energy revolution needs to be spectacular. Some of the smartest bets in this cohort are focused squarely on efficiency in semiconductors and data centers. Companies like Bedrock Semiconductor, K1 Semiconductor, and VariFlux are working on ways to squeeze more performance and savings out of the chips that are inside practically everything today.
K1, for example, is developing a new and more efficient method for processing essential semiconductor materials like gallium nitride and silicon carbide. And the impact could be massive. According to Gaddy, it could reduce the cost of power electronics by maybe 50%, or even more. When you consider that these components exist at a scale of billions of units, every efficiency gain has a huge multiplier effect on global electricity demand.
That is why efficiency shows up as a cross-cutting theme across several of the selected companies. When we talk about more efficient semiconductors, we are talking about reducing the power consumption of chips that run everything from smartphones to AI servers. Gains at this layer do not make headlines, but they can be just as impactful as building a large-scale solar plant. It is the kind of quiet innovation that supports the entire energy transition behind the scenes. 🔋
Hydrogen, Ammonia, Agriculture, and Critical Minerals
Among the most talked-about technologies in the new class, hydrogen holds a prominent spot. Companies like AmHyTech and Ammovolt Energy are developing ways to use and transport hydrogen through ammonia. And Toone’s explanation for this is one of the best metaphors in the sector: hydrogen is the Swiss Army knife of energy. If you have enough hydrogen, and especially if it is cheap enough, you can do just about anything.
The problem is that the infrastructure to move this gas around simply does not exist. According to Toone, there is virtually zero installed capacity in the United States for that. There is no straightforward way to transport hydrogen, and that is exactly where ammonia comes in as a promising alternative. It works as an energy carrier that can hold hydrogen in a much more stable and dense form, opening the door to applications in sectors that direct electrification cannot reach, like heavy industry and long-distance transportation.
But Breakthrough Energy did not stop there. The organization is also betting on agriculture and critical minerals. Among the selected technologies are molecular sensing techniques to detect crop diseases and robotic systems to harvest minerals from the ocean floor while minimizing environmental impact as much as possible. The connection to the energy transition is direct: demand for critical minerals like lithium, cobalt, and nickel — essential for batteries and storage systems — is going to skyrocket in the coming decades, and land-based reserves are already under enormous pressure. Mithril Minerals is one of the companies exploring precisely this new supply frontier. 🌊
What This Selection Says About the Future of Energy
Looking at the 21 companies in this cohort is, in a way, looking at a map of the most relevant technology bets for the next cycle of energy innovation. It is not a perfect map, because no single selection can capture everything, but it is an honest snapshot of where the most well-informed people on the topic are placing their chips right now. And what this map shows is that the energy transition is getting more complex, not simpler.
First-generation solutions like solar, wind, and electric vehicles are already scaling up. Now the challenge is solving the harder layers of the problem: heavy industry, long-distance transportation, long-term storage, and adapting to changes that are already inevitable. The presence of hydrogen, ammonia, and nuclear fusion on this list reinforces something that industry experts have been saying for years: there is no single solution to decarbonize the entire global economy.
Finally, the pivot that Breakthrough Energy signaled by including climate adaptation technologies in this edition’s portfolio is an important signal for the entire innovation ecosystem. It means that decarbonization and climate resilience are no longer separate conversations. They need to happen in parallel, with the same urgency and the same level of investment. The startups that understand this dual mission are going to be in a very interesting position when the market finally starts pricing climate risk realistically. And that moment, based on how things are trending, is coming faster than expected. ⚡
