Inevitable

Rob Black, New Mexico economic development chief focused on landing advanced energy and computing projects. Bruce Brown, sovereign wealth strategist directing the $72B fund into climate and deep-tech. Carl Hoyland, CEO of Zanskar Geothermal using AI to scale geothermal. Carrie von Muench, Pacific Fusion cofounder building modular fusion systems. They discuss state-led capital deployment, white-glove support for builders, infrastructure needs, and creative financing for first-of-a-kind projects.

Eddy Chiang, co-founder and CEO of Moment Energy, builds commercial energy storage from repurposed EV batteries. He discusses certifying second-life systems, why safety—not just cost—drives adoption, and how modular distributed batteries can replace grid upgrades. The conversation also covers scaling manufacturing, UL certification, and meeting hyperscaler demand with long-lived infrastructure.

Joel Gratz, founding meteorologist and CEO of OpenSnow, built a popular forecast service for skiers. He breaks down why a brutal Western snow season is more about atmospheric variability than a simple climate blame. He explains why nighttime warmth hurts snowpack, how mountain forecasting differs, and how OpenSnow grew from a friends’ text thread into a profitable, niche weather business.

Dave McColl, Executive Director of Stanford Climate Ventures, runs a project-based program that helps students build climate startups. Carla Pinzon, founder of Expand Power, builds solid-state transformers for modern grids. Raj Tilwa, co-founder of Focal, designs AI-enabled localized heating for commercial spaces. Nico Pinkowski, founder of Nitricity, makes decentralized organic fertilizer from air, water, renewables, and waste. They discuss discovery-driven company building, market pivots, and long paths to product-market fit.

John Dean, Co-founder and CEO of WindBorne, builds long-duration weather balloons and an AI forecasting platform. He discusses why better observations matter, how week-long balloons collect data over oceans and storms, the Atlas balloon constellation and WeatherMesh AI, and commercial uses for utilities and traders. He also outlines safety, cost reductions, and a vision for a planetary-scale sensing network.

Alex Blumberg, co-founder and CEO of DaisyChain Energy and former founder of Gimlet Media, brings media chops to building-focused climate tech. He explains how submetering and rate arbitrage create immediate financial value for building owners. Short talks cover turning aggregated building loads into grid assets, solving hospital power quality risks, and using dollars-not-green to drive decarbonization.

Ashvin Dayal, Senior VP for Power and Climate at the Rockefeller Foundation, leads the Global Energy Alliance to expand clean electricity in emerging markets. He discusses why energy access matters, how philanthropic first-loss capital unlocks private investment, the rise of distributed solar and mini-grids, Mission 300 to electrify millions, and exploring nuclear and SMRs as part of a diverse energy mix.

William Layden, Co-founder and CEO of Rune, builds modular DC micro data centers that plug into solar and wind to turn stranded clean power into compute. He explains solar clipping and curtailment, why DC-to-DC architecture matters, starting with Bitcoin as a beachhead, and how modular units can rapidly deploy AI-scale compute at renewable sites.

Varun Sivaram, founder and CEO of Emerald AI and energy infrastructure veteran, builds software that makes AI data centers power-flexible. He discusses treating data centers as controllable loads, shifting compute across time and place, coordinating with batteries, and a Phoenix field trial showing large grid relief without breaking compute.

Eugene Kirpichov, co-founder and executive director of Work on Climate, helps professionals become climate leaders inside companies and communities. He argues that landing a climate job is not enough. Conversations cover shifting from jobs to leadership and power. They explore regenerative economics, building new economic operating systems, and how networks can outcompete incumbents to scale systemic change.