Breakthrough Energy Ventures was founded by Bill Gates in 2015, backed by a roster of billionaire co-investors including Jeff Bezos, Jack Ma, Richard Branson, and Masayoshi Son, and launched with an explicit rejection of typical venture timelines: the fund operates on a 20-year investment horizon, far longer than the standard 10-year fund life, on the theory that hard climate technology genuinely needs that patience to reach commercial scale. Its investment bar is unusually specific for a venture fund - every company must have credible potential to eliminate at least 1% of global annual greenhouse-gas emissions - and its more than 110 portfolio companies span electricity, transportation, manufacturing, buildings, food, and agriculture. BEV has raised more than $3.5 billion in committed capital across three funds since 2016, positioning it as the largest and most institutionally backed climate-focused venture platform in the world.
No confirmed public exit directly attributable to BEV as an investor - the fund instead measures itself by an unusually specific mandate: every company must have credible potential to eliminate at least 1% of global annual greenhouse-gas emissions