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Idealab and Heliogen Founder Bill Gross speaks onstage during Vox Media’s 2022 Code Conference on September 08, 2022 in Beverly Hills, California.

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Bill Gross is best known for founding the technology incubator Idealab in 1996, after starting a handful of companies in software, education tech and online services spaces.

In the quarter-century since, Idealab has has started more than 150 companies and had more than 45 successful exits. Today, Gross devotes virtually all of his time to being the CEO of clean energy company Heliogen, which he launched out of Idealab in 2013, scoring Bill Gates as an early investor.

But Gross has always been a climate tech entrepreneur. He’s just had to wait for the world to catch up with him a bit.

He actually started a solar device company when he was in high school, long before he got into software, and the money he made helped him pay for college.

Gross grew up in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. When he was 15, in 1973, gas was rationed after OPEC imposed an oil embargo against the United States in order to punish the U.S. for providing support to Israel in the Arab-Israel war.

“You only could buy five dollars of gasoline per day. And I remember that my mother couldn’t buy enough gasoline to drive me to school,” Gross told CNBC in a video interview earlier in the fall.

So Gross had to ride his bike to high school. “As I’m riding both ways on the bicycle, I’m sitting here thinking, ‘It’s crazy that there’s somewhere else in the world that could decide to cut off your fuel supply, the thing that people need for their livelihood.’ I didn’t understand anything about climate change, or energy or anything. I just thought, ‘Someone else could do that?! That’s crazy.'”

This thought is still relevant now almost 50 years later, as Russia has cut off supplies of gas it is sending to Europe in response to the Ukraine war.

Gross went to the library after school to read about alternative renewable forms of energy such as solar energy and wind energy in the likes of Popular Science or Scientific American magazines. He got excited about the idea of renewable energy, had just taken trigonometry in school and used his newfound knowledge of both to make a couple of devices based on the idea of catching the sunlight and concentrating it.

Notes from when Bill Gross was a teenager developing the solar device that he went on to sell by mail in the 1970’s.

Photo courtesy Bill Gross

One device he made was a parabola-shaped solar concentrator that could be used to create a solar oven or solar cooker. The other was a Stirling engine, which converts heat energy into kinetic or mechanical energy.

“Because I was reading Popular Science magazine, I saw people used to take out little ads in the back,” Gross told CNBC. “And I had $400 of bar mitzvah money leftover, so I took out a small add in the back of Popular Science advertising ‘Kits and plans to make your own solar concentrator,’ and I started selling them!”

He would go on to sell 10,000 of these plans and kits starting at $4 apiece. Personal computers didn’t yet exist, so he typed the material on a typewriter and made the drawings himself by hand.

An advertisement that Bill Gross placed in the back of Popular Science magazine to advertise his solar devices company. The plans Gross sold were $4.00, but the ad says 25 cents to get a catalog, because he had a few different offerings.

Courtesy Bill Gross

He put what he made towards his college tuition. People from all over the country bought the kits and would send Gross a check or cash. It was his first foray into entrepreneurship, which was exciting, he said, and the experience served to change the trajectory of his life in other ways, too.

“I was really passionate about it back then. It really affected my life,” Gross told CNBC. “I wrote about that little business I started — it was called Solar Devices — on my application to college and it got me into CalTech. So it probably had a huge impact on my direction.”

For a long time, ‘nobody cared’

Gross studied mechanical engineering at CalTech while continuing to run the Solar Devices business during his first year, but then college got too demanding and he couldn’t keep up with running the business. Gross graduated from CalTech in 1981, right around the time IBM released its first mass-market personal computer.

Solar Devices order tracking from Bill Gross, circa 1970’s.

Photo courtesy Bill Gross

“I have these two seminal things that happen in my life: The Arab oil embargo and now the PC is invented basically on my day of graduation in 1981,” Gross told CNBC. “So I went down and bought an IBM PC. And I started learning how to program and I had a detour for 20 years doing software.”

Gross’ detour into software started in the early 1980’s when he wrote accounting software inside of Lotus 1-2-3 to help manage his business making and selling high-performance loudspeakers. He started selling that software for $695. Gross, his brother and two CalTech friends came up with a natural language interface to Lotus 1-2-3, which they showed off at a Las Vegas tech show in 1985. Lotus ended up acquiring the product (and the four of them) for $10 million.

Gross later founded an educational software company and sold it to Vivendi for $90 million, then started tech incubator Idealab at the dawn of the dot-com boom. In the early 2000s, he decided to begin to pivot back to climate tech, this time with some money in the bank.

Bill Gross graduating from college.

Photo courtesy Bill Gross.

He started doing research and development in the space, but there wasn’t enough demand for solar energy tech. “I was way too early. No one cared,” Gross told CNBC.

“I remember I was working on this when Al Gore came out with ‘Inconvenient Truth.’ Still, nobody cared. I remember working on this in 2008 during the recession, nobody cared. I remember in the early 2010, 2012, people started talking about it, but there was no Greta yet,” Gross said, referring to the climate activist Greta Thunberg, who started protesting a lack of climate change action in 2018. “There was no movement. And certainly there was no inflation Reduction Act, which is a game changer,” Gross said.

In 2010, Gross heard Bill Gates speak at a TED conference about needing to make energy and energy storage cheaper. After that talk, Gross approached Gates and shared his idea of using computational power to improve the efficiency of solar power. Gates ended up investing in Gross’s idea, seeing the potential to replace many industrial processes that require high heat and burn fossil fuels to get there.

In 2013, Gross launched Heliogen, which uses artificial intelligence to position a collection of mirrors located in a circle around a central tower to reflect the sunlight back with maximum impact.

One critical component of Heliogen’s approach is built-in energy storage. One limiting factor for solar energy is its intermittency, which means it only delivers power when the sun is shining. But Heliogen stores energy as heat in a thermos of rocks — something traditional solar panels cannot do without batteries, as they turn the sun’s rays immediately into electricity.

“We’re gathering the energy when the sun is out. But we’re delivering the energy continuously because the energy is coming out of the rock bed,” Gross told CNBC. “And basically we are recharging the rock bed, like you would recharge your battery. The difference is a battery expensive, and rock bed is cheap.”

In 2019, Heliogen announced it had successfully concentrated solar energy to temperatures over 1,832 degrees Fahrenheit.

A bird’s eye view of the concentrated solar technology Heliogen is working to build and commercialize. This is the demonstration project in Lancaster, Calif.

Photo courtesy Heliogen

“Heliogen is the culmination of my life’s work,” Gross told CNBC, because it uses both software and renewable energy expertise.

The company had its first prototype in 2015, “but then, still, nobody cared. Couldn’t get any customers,” Gross said. He did get a couple of customers, but, it was still “struggling, struggling, struggling.” By 2019, Heliogen had the first large-scale system built and this time, “the world went crazy,” Gross said. “We got so much press and publicity, and customers started calling us all over who wanted to replace fossil fuels with concentrated sunlight, and then Covid hit,” Gross said.

After a bit of a Covid slowdown, interest started picking up again as the urgency around decarbonizing mounted and as energy price volatility made companies rethink their energy supply strategies, Gross said. The company went public via SPAC in a deal that landed $188 million of gross cash proceeds to Heliogen and on Dec. 31, 2021, Heliogen started trading.

The company is not yet profitable, losing $108 million in the first nine months of the year, but that’s expected as the company scales, according to Gross.

“We projected we would run at a loss for the few years of operation as we drive down the cost with volume production and the renewable energy production learning curve,” Gross told CNBC.

Heliogen’s first commercial grade project is in the final stages of permitting and aims to break ground next year in Mojave, California. The concentrated solar field is funded with $50 million from Woodside Energy, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Australian energy producer Woodside Petroleum, and $39 million from the U.S. Department of Energy.

This is the demonstration project in Lancaster, Calif. of the the concentrated solar technology Heliogen is working to build and commercialize.

Photo courtesy Heliogen

While Gross has been ahead of the curve for most of his climate career, he’s confident the industry is catching up with him now. As the urgency surrounding climate change has become more widely understood, corporate executives face pressure from stakeholders to clean up their corporate emissions.

“But then the final straw was price of fossil fuels went up like crazy. The price of fossil fuels after Russia invaded Ukraine is a game changer,” Gross told CNBC. “Now, it’s not just for CO2 emissions, now you can save money. Now, this is the ultimate thing, which is make the energy transition be about reducing your cost, not about increasing your cost.”

There’s no time to waste.

“When I was a teenager, there was 320 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere,” said Gross, who is now 64 years old. “And today, there are 420.”

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Ford is preparing for an all-new EV at its Louisville assembly plant, but which one?

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Ford is preparing for an all-new EV at its Louisville assembly plant, but which one?

The Louisville assembly plant is scheduled for an extensive retooling starting later this year to produce a new Ford EV model. After the Escape is phased out, Ford will upgrade the facility to introduce an all-new EV.

What new EV will Ford build in Louisville?

Since 2022, Ford has had the same three electric vehicles available in the US. The Mustang Mach-E, F-150 Lightning, and E-Transit. However, that could change soon.

According to Todd Dunn, president of UAW Local 862, Ford’s Louisville plant will likely see some major changes later this year.

Dunn told The Courier Journal that the retooling could take upwards of 10 months. Ford is expected to begin the upgrades in December when the Escape and Lincoln Corsair, which are made at the plant, are phased out.

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Although Ford has yet to confirm the retooling, according to Dunn, the downtime will impact around 2,300 workers at the plant. They are expected to be temporarily laid off during the retooling, but Dunn said they will qualify for supplemental unemployment benefits and will also be able to draw unemployment.

Ford-new-EV-Louisville
Ford Mustang Mach-E (left) and F-150 Lightning (right) (Source: Ford)

The upgrades are part of a 2023 UAW and Ford agreement to make the Louisville plant one of three due for a future EV model.

As to which EV, Dunn still doesn’t know, or when Ford will officially announce it. Since Ford already scrapped plans for a three-row electric SUV, that’s out.

Ford-new-EV-Louisville
Ford’s electric Explorer for Europe (Source: Ford)

Ford is planning to launch the first model on its long-awaited low-cost EV platform, a midsize electric pickup, in 2027. But this is expected to be built in Tennessee. A new “digitally advanced” electric van that will be built in Ohio is also due out next year.

2025-Ford-F-150-Lightning
2025 Ford F-150 Lightning (Source: Ford)

So, what mysterious new EV is Ford planning for Louisville? Ford spokesperson Jess Enoch told The Courier-Journal last year that the company is “committed to an all-new electric vehicle” at the plant but said, “We will share details closer to launch.”

The news comes after Ford’s Mustang Mach-E notched its highest first-quarter sales since its launch, with 11,607 units sold in the first three months of 2024. F-150 Lightning sales, on the other hand, fell 7%.

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Eric Trump says he moved to crypto after family business became ‘most canceled company’

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Eric Trump says he moved to crypto after family business became 'most canceled company'

American Bitcoin co-founder Eric Trump: Crypto's the 'future of the modern financial system'

Eric Trump says his family was “the most canceled company, probably on Earth.”

That was then.

With his dad, President Donald Trump, back in the White House, he sees a new money-making opportunity.

“It actually is what drove us toward cryptocurrency,” the president’s middle son told CNBC, referring to the Trump family’s latest business endeavors. “You realize that cryptocurrency was a lot faster, it was a lot more pragmatic, it was a lot more transparent, it was exponentially cheaper.”

In 2022, about two years after the end of President Trump’s first term, two subsidiaries of the Trump Organization were convicted by a jury in New York of multiple crimes, including tax fraud, falsifying business records and conspiracy. The guilty verdicts on all 17 charged counts came three weeks after Trump declared his 2024 candidacy.

Last month, the Trump Organization sued Capital One in Florida over allegedly “unjustifiably” closing more than 300 of the company’s bank accounts following the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. The lawsuit claimed Capitol One was acting on “unsubstantiated, ‘woke’ beliefs that it needed to distance itself from President Trump and his conservative political views.”

Prior to Trump’s return to the White House, the Trump Organization unveiled a new ethics plan that said it would limit the president’s involvement in management decisions and other aspects of the business while he’s in office.

President Donald Trump (2R), flanked by US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick (L), US Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent (2L) and White House AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks (R), attends a the White House Crypto Summit in Washington, DC, March 7, 2025. 

Jim Watson | Afp | Getty Images

But crypto is another matter. President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump launched meme coins just before the new term, adding billions of dollars of paper wealth to the family’s net worth.

Eric Trump and older brother Donald Trump Jr. are going even bigger. They recently announced plans to launch a U.S. dollar–backed stablecoin through their new venture, World Liberty Financial, and a new bitcoin mining company called American Bitcoin, co-founded with Hut 8 CEO Asher Genoot.

Eric Trump described his entry into crypto not as a financial bet, but as a form of resistance, and said the move began during what he calls the “war on the industry.” Banks were closing accounts, the SEC was cracking down on exchanges, and crypto users were being “debanked” for simply holding coins, he said.

“They were going after people,” he said. “They were suing everybody. Banks were closing down people that just wanted to own bitcoin.”

That’s when Eric Trump said he started associating with like-minded people in and around crypto.

“At this point, I know almost everybody in the industry in some way, shape or form,” he said. “I fell in love with the industry, you know, a few years ago, and really dove head in.”

At World Liberty Financial, the Trump brothers are backing a stablecoin play aimed at competing with players like Tether. Eric Trump didn’t have a specific answer when asked how the project would stand out in a crowded field, saying only, “We’re gonna do it better, cheaper, faster, and we’re gonna do it with a lot of passion.”

Read more about tech and crypto from CNBC Pro

Meawhile, he’s working with Genoot to stand up American Bitcoin, a new mining venture that aims to scale quickly, and possibly go public.

Genoot told CNBC he connected with the Trump kids through mutual friends and began trading stories about their paths into crypto, leading to a business alliance.

Genoot said the company is being separated from Hut 8’s broader energy and artificial intelligence infrastructure platform.

“We’re actually carving out the majority of our assets,” Genoot said. “We’re putting them into American Bitcoin.”

Eric Trump, who is co-founder and chief strategy officer of American Bitcoin, said “every single sophisticated country is using their excess power to mine bitcoin.”

Though his family is closely linked to the current administration’s pro-crypto stance, Eric Trump said he has no role in policy and no contact with the White House. His dad’s presidency was heavily funded by the crypto industry and, since returning to the White House, President Trump has rewarded his backers, signing an executive order to create a strategic bitcoin reserve, and pardoning Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht as well as the three co-founders of the BitMEX crypto exchange.

“I don’t have anything to do with government, and frankly, I don’t want anything to do with government,” Eric Trump said.

But he made clear that the U.S. needs a regulatory framework that allows crypto to thrive.

“You better believe that China is running very hard at this. The entire Middle East is running very hard,” he said. “We won the space race. We better win the crypto race.”

WATCH: Eric Trump, Hut 8 CEO outline partnership to launch new bitcoin mining company

Eric Trump, Hut 8 CEO outline partnership to launch new bitcoin mining company: CNBC Crypto World

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Greenlane and Volvo’s bold plan to transform electric truck charging in the US

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Greenlane and Volvo’s bold plan to transform electric truck charging in the US

Greenlane is teaming up with Volvo Trucks North America to make charging heavy-duty electric vehicles (HDEVs) easier and more accessible.

The charging network developer is now integrated into Volvo’s Open Charge service, which gives Volvo customers streamlined access to Greenlane’s public chargers. This collaboration makes Greenlane the first official Charge Point Operator (CPO) in North America to partner with Volvo.

Greenlane is a joint venture between Daimler Truck North America, NextEra Energy, and BlackRock. It’s building a US-wide charging network for heavy-duty commercial vehicles, aiming to reduce costs and simplify switching to electric fleets.

Through Volvo Open Charge, Volvo customers now have real-time access to Greenlane’s network, which means easier access to public charging, centralized billing, and special perks. Fleets won’t have to spend big money on their charging infrastructure. Instead, they can plug into Greenlane’s growing network, which will help cut costs and operational headaches while extending range.

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Patrick Macdonald-King, Greenlane’s CEO, called the partnership “a first-of-its-kind collaboration to deliver public charging solutions tailored to the needs of medium- and heavy-duty fleets.” He said it’s all about making the shift to electric trucks smoother and keeping goods and services moving while progressing toward zero-emissions freight.

Greenlane’s flagship charging site is set to open in Colton, California, in April, with more than 40 publicly accessible chargers for everything from heavy-duty trucks to smaller electric vehicles. It’s part of a larger plan to build a network along the I-15 corridor, with stations roughly 60 to 90 miles apart. Future California locations are planned for Long Beach, Barstow, and Baker.

Greenlane and Volvo will continue integrating new membership features into Volvo Open Charge, such as booking reservations. By letting fleets tap into an existing public network, Greenlane’s services can make the transition to electric trucking less about building infrastructure and more about just getting trucks on the road.

Read more: Greenlane’s flagship electric charging truck stop to open in April


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