BLOOM ENERGY

Founders: Kera R. Sridhar, John Finn, Matthias Gottmann, James McElroy, Dien Nguyen
Key people: Kera R. Sridhar (CEO)
Number of employees: ~1000

Bloom Energy is the company that develops, builds, and installs Bloom Energy Servers. The company, started in 2002 by CEO K.R. Sridhar, is one of 26 named a 2010 Tech Pioneer by the World Economic Forum.

History

In October 2001, CEO K.R Sridhar met with John Doerr from the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. Sridhar asked for more than $100 million to start the company. Bloom Energy eventually received $400 million of start-up funding from venture capitalists, including Kleiner Perkins and Vinod Khosla.

The company, originally called Ion America, was renamed Bloom Energy in 2006.

Sridhar credited his nine-year-old son for the name, saying that his son believed jobs, lives, environment, and children would bloom. Michael R. Bloomberg appeared at the launch by video link. Bloomberg’s business news network covered the event, but attributed every statement to “Bloom Energy”.

The CEO gave a media interview (to Fortune Magazine) for the first time in 2010, eight years after founding the company, because of pressure from his customers. A few days later he allowed Lesley Stahl of the CBS News program 60 Minutes to see the factory. On February 24, 2010, the company held its first press conference.

Bloom Energy’s well-known customers includ e Walmart, Staples, AT&T, Adobe, Coca-Cola, Ebay, Google, Bank of America, FedEx, Life Technologies, Safeway, Yahoo, Apple and Home Depot.

In July 2014, the company announced a “long-term strategic partnership” with Exelon Corporation to finance “fuel cell projects at 75 commercial facilities in California, Connecticut, New Jersey and New York.”

In October 2016, the electric utility Southern Company announced that its PowerSecure subsidiary is buying 50 megawatts of fuel cells from Bloom Energy. PowerSecure will package the fuel cells with Lithium-ion batteries with the intent of selling the technology, with related infrastructure, to corporate and industrial customers under long-term contracts. PowerSecure’s technology helps businesses maintain operations through grid blackouts. The installations could qualify for a California subsidy for batteries that enable customers to reduce their use of electricity from the grid at peak times.