Bill Gates-backed Breakthrough Energy pauses fresh funding activities and announces staff layoffs
Established in 2021, Breakthrough’s Catalyst Fund secured over $1 billion to support the demonstration and large-scale deployment of pioneering green technologies.
Breakthrough Energy, a Bill Gates-backed group that funds climate tech, has stopped making new investments from a dedicated fund to promote new green technologies, just as President Donald Trump’s attacks on climate policy are shrinking the market for these startups.
Launched in 2021, Breakthrough’s Catalyst Fund raised more than $1 billion to finance the demonstration and scale-up of first-of-their-kind green solutions, which are often difficult to launch due to their unproven technology and high costs.
A Breakthrough Energy spokesperson said that after supporting 10 startups and spending “hundreds of millions of dollars,” new investments from the fund have now been halted.
“As the organization has learned from its initial investments, Catalyst has transitioned from looking for new funding opportunities to managing and supporting its existing companies,” the spokesperson said.
“It’s too early to say what the future of our deployment work will look like.” Axios first reported on the fund’s change of direction.
According to a spokesperson, there are no immediate plans to raise more money for the Catalyst Fund, and they declined to say what will be done with the remaining capital.
As part of the ongoing reform, Breakthrough Energy Catalyst has also laid off some employees, including its former leader, Mario Fernandez.
The spokesperson said that “a smaller team is needed to continue the work.”
Unlike most project financing funds, Catalyst is designed as a hybrid of philanthropic and return-generating financing, making it less difficult to complete.
This new move also highlights the significant challenges climate tech investors face in generating financial returns from first-of-their-kind technologies amid political and economic difficulties.
In a memo published in January, Gates warned that the market alone cannot solve climate change and appealed for more government support.
The Catalyst Fund is one of a series of green initiatives Gates has launched in recent years under the Breakthrough Energy banner.
Gates said in an interview in October that the venture-capital firm Breakthrough Energy Ventures has also funded about 150 climate-focused startups, of which about 30 or 40 have failed.
He said that in the search for solutions to decarbonize the world, “a lot of avenues will be closed.”
Trump’s climate policy changes have diverted hundreds of billions of dollars that would have supported green technology under President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.
This has made it even more urgent for existing startups to find new sources of cash to help scale their technology.
In September, a group of venture firms, including Breakthrough Energy Ventures, launched the All Aboard Coalition with the goal of raising $300 million for its first investment.
The Catalyst Fund’s investment strategy needed to be rethought after Gates was criticized in October by some climate advocates, who argued that prioritizing the climate fight above everything else could overshadow issues like health and equality.
Early last year, after Trump returned to the White House, Breakthrough also scaled back its public policy advocacy work and laid off dozens of employees in the US and Europe.
But Gates said his views on the need for the Paris Climate Treaty and the need for companies to reduce emissions remain the same.
The organization’s venture arm, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, has raised some money from billionaires, including Jeff Bezos and Michael Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.
Catalyst is run separately and funded separately.
