Bill Gates has signed on a laundry list of the world's richest and most powerful people to head up his new climate change initiative.
The "Breakthrough Energy Coalition" has 30 bigwigs who will invest their money in technologies that will reduce our demand for fossil fuels. Their aim is to use their influence to help jumpstart demand for and availability of green energy sources.
They will pour money into early-stage startups that promise to provide "everyone with affordable, reliable energy" that produces zero carbon emissions. They will also support government-backed green energy research.
Here are the big names Gates rounded up for his coalition:
Tech executives
- Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com
- Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon
- Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn
- Jack Ma, chairman of Alibaba Group
- Patrice Motsepe, chairman of African Rainbow Minerals
- Xavier Niel, founder of Iliad Group
- Hasso Plattner, chairman of SAP
- Masayoshi Son, CEO of SoftBank Group
- Ratan Tata, chairman emeritus of Tata Sons
- Meg Whitman, CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise
- Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook
Investors
- Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries Limited
- John Arnold, co-chair of Laura and John Arnold Foundation
- Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, chairman of Alwaleed Philanthropies
- Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group
- Priscilla Chan, CEO of the Primary School
- Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates
- Aliko Dangote, CEO of Dangote Group
- John Doerr, general partner of Kleiner Perkins
- Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
- Chris Hohn, founder of The Children's Investment Fund
- Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures
- Julian Robertson, chairman of Tiger Management
- Neil Shen, managing partner of Sequoia Capital China
- Nat Simons, co-founder of Prelude Ventures
- Laura Baxter-Simons, co-founder of Prelude Ventures
- George Soros, chairman of Soros Fund Management
- Tom Steyer, president of NextGen Climate
- Pan Shiyi, chairman of of SOHO China
- Zhang Xin, CEO of SOHO China
Institutions
- The University of California
- Office of the Chief Investment Officer United States
