Idealab founder Bill Gross started selling solar energy kits in 1973 at 15 years old. Now he’s leading solar tech company Heliogen
Idealab and Heliogen Founder Bill Gross speaks onstage during Vox Media’s 2022 Code Conference on September 08, 2022 in Beverly Hills, California.
Jerod Harris | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images
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.”
Environment
Ford and SK On kill massive $11.4B US battery joint venture, split factories between them
In a massive shakeup for the US electric vehicle supply chain, Ford and South Korean battery giant SK On announced today that they are ending their massive “BlueOval SK” joint venture.
The two companies will effectively split the custody of the three massive battery factories they were building together, with Ford taking the Kentucky site and SK On taking the Tennessee site.
Back in 2021, Ford and SK Innovation (SK On’s parent) announced a massive $11.4 billion investment to build three battery gigafactories in the US: two in Kentucky and one in Tennessee. It was, at the time, the single largest manufacturing investment in Ford’s 118-year history.
The idea was to create a vertically integrated battery supply chain for Ford’s next-generation electric trucks and SUVs.
But today, SK confirmed reports that they are dissolving the JV structure entirely.
According to the announcement, Ford will take full ownership of the two battery plants in Kentucky. One of these plants had already begun initial operations earlier this year, while the second is still under construction.
SK On, meanwhile, will take full ownership of the BlueOval City battery plant in Tennessee.
Ford acknowledged the announcement from SK, but it refused to comment:
We are aware of SK’s disclosure and we have nothing further to share at this time.
The South Korean battery maker was surprisingly candid about the reasoning, stating that the split allows them to “supply batteries for both electric vehicles and energy storage systems not only to Ford but to a wider range of customers.”
This confirms that SK On didn’t want to be tied exclusively to Ford’s production volumes, which have been fluctuating wildly over the last year as the automaker adjusts its EV strategy. SK On explicitly mentioned expanding into the Energy Storage System (ESS) market,a sector that is booming right now, using the capacity at the Tennessee plant.
The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2026.
This comes amid narratives of “slowing EV demand” from legacy automakers and a changing political landscape in the US that has introduced uncertainty following the end of federal incentives.
Electrek’s Take
This is a huge deal, and frankly, it smells like trouble for Ford’s original volume targets.
When you form a multi-billion-dollar JV, you do it to lock in supply and share the massive capital burden. Breaking it up less than four years later, before all the plants are even running, suggests that the original plan is effectively dead.
In short, it would suggest Ford does not want the battery capacity from the factory it gave to SK.
This is not exactly surprising considering Ford’s pullback of EV plans, such as the F-150 Lightning, recently.
For SK On, this looks like a smart pivot. If Ford isn’t buying enough cells to fill the lines because they are delaying EV models or pivoting to hybrids, SK needs the freedom to sell those batteries to Hyundai, VW, or into the energy grid storage market, which is insatiable right now.
They basically just freed up 45 GWh of capacity in Tennessee to sell to whoever writes the biggest check.
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Another EV is reportedly on the chopping block from Hyundai’s US lineup. Here’s what we know so far.
Is Hyundai pulling the IONIQ 6 EV from the US?
The sporty “N” model may be the only IONIQ 6 trim Hyundai offers in the US for the 2026 model year. Hyundai confirmed the 2026 IONIQ 6 N will be “extremely limited” in the US, but has not offered any updates on the standard version.
Hyundai gave the electric fastback a major refresh for 2026, complete with a sharp new look, a bigger battery for more range, a refined interior, and more.
That sounds nice and all, but will we ever get to see it in the US? According to a report from Jalopnik, the IONIQ 6 N may be the only trim available next year.
When asked whether the updated IONIQ 6 would be coming to the US, Hyundai said no updates were available at the moment. On Hyundai’s website, the 2026 IONIQ 6 is listed with “more details to come.”
Although the Hyundai brand has not scrapped any EVs from its US lineup, its luxury Genesis brand dropped the Electrified G80 and is shifting from initial plans for an all-electric lineup to launching its first hybrid and extended-range electric vehicles (EREVs).
Hyundai’s sister company, Kia, has indefinitely delayed the EV4 electric sedan and the high-performance EV9 GT for the US market.
Is the IONIQ 6 next? A Hyundai spokesperson told TheKoreanCarBlog there are currently no new updates on plans to bring the updated IONIQ 6 to the US. The high-performance N variant remains the only 2026 IONIQ N trim confirmed to launch.
Hyundai has yet to reveal prices for the 641 hp electric sports car, but given the 2025 IONIQ 5 N starts at $66,200, the IONIQ 6 N will likely be slightly more expensive.
With the 2026 models arriving at dealerships, Hyundai is offering a few deals worth checking out. The IONIQ 5 remains one of the most affordable EVs in the US, with leases starting at just $189 a month. You can use the links below to find available models by you.
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Environment
Rivian AI & Autonomy Day: In-house silicon chip, next-gen AI platform, LiDAR for Level 4 self-driving [Video]
![Rivian AI & Autonomy Day: In-house silicon chip, next-gen AI platform, LiDAR for Level 4 self-driving [Video]](https://i0.wp.com/electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2025/12/Rivian-autonomy-R2-LiDAR-front.jpg?resize=1200,628&quality=82&strip=all&ssl=1)
As promised, we are here in Palo Alto, California, live at Rivian’s inaugural AI and Autonomy day, which the American automaker has been teasing for a month now. The event was filled with numerous exciting updates, including new in-house technology, a new AI assistant, the addition of LiDAR, and a uniquely wrapped Rivian R2.
Today’s AI and Autonomy event has been on our radar since Rivian released its Q3 2025 financial report, back in early November. At the time, the American automaker shared it had recently founded a new AI-focused company called Mind Robotics, joining its recently launched e-bike brand, ALSO.
When Rivian’s comms team shared the news about Mind Robotics, it said not to bother asking any additional questions, as the company wasn’t sharing any other details at the time. Instead, more would be revealed at an upcoming event called Rivian’s AI and Autonomy Day, slotted for December 11, 2026.
Here we are, and if you’re reading this, Rivian’s livestream of the inaugural event is either happening or has recently taken place. In addition to AI news, Rivian shared a slew of exciting updates, including some new component integrations as the automaker joins the race to achieve full-fledged Level 4 autonomy someday.
There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s dig in.
Rivian to deliver new AI and autonomy tech in early 2026
Since today’s event was partially an AI Day, let’s start there. To begin, it revealed a new Rivian Autonomy Processor (RAP1) and Gen 3 Autonomy Computer, powered by a new in-house silicon chip designed for vision-centric AI.
According to Rivian, RAP1 will power its Gen 3 Autonomy computer, called the Autonomy Compute Module 3, or “ACM3.” Here are some key specs:
- 1,600 sparse INT8 TOPS (Trillion Operations Per Second)
- Processing power of 5 billion pixels per second
- RAP1 features RivLink, a low-latency interconnect technology allowing chips to be connected and multiply processing power
- RAP1 is enabled by an AI compiler and platform software developed in-house by Rivian
Additionally, AI plays a key role in Rivian’s business infrastructure and user experience through a shared, multi-modal, and multi-LLM data foundation it calls “Rivian Unified Intelligence” (RUI).
Rivian says RUI will integrate AI into diagnostics to assist techs and quickly identify “complex issues.”Rivian states that the AI platform will also aid in the development of powerful new features, enhance service infrastructure, and facilitate predictive maintenance.
A notable addition that stood out to me in this new architecture is the Rivian Assistant (pictured above), which we’ve learned will launch in early 2026 on Gen 1 and Gen 2 R1 vehicles. Here are some highlights, per Rivian:
- Built on Rivian’s edge models to understand your vehicle, your digital life, and the world around you
- Connects vehicle systems with third-party apps using an in-house agentic framework, with Google Calendar named as the first integration
- Augmented by frontier large language models for grounded data, natural conversation and
- powerful reasoning.
Now for the second part of Rivian’s special event – autonomy. This morning, Rivian shared details of its new Autonomy Platform as well as an end-to-end data loop used to train it. This Large Driving Model (LDM) is trained similarly to a Large Language Model (LLM), but programmed to achieve foundational autonomy, with the ultimate aim of reaching Level 4 self-driving capabilities.
The new LDM will gather ideal driving strategies from massive datasets using Group-Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) and will then incorporate those techniques into a compatible Rivian vehicle. According to Rivian, those autonomy software enhancements will be rolled out to Gen 2 R1 models in the near future, unlocking Universal Hands-Free (UHF) driving capabilities for over 3.5 million miles of roads across the US and Canada. Check it out:
To access this feature, Rivian has introduced an autonomy subscription called Autonomy+, launching in early 2026 for a one-time fee of $2,500 or a monthly payment of $49.99 to access the feature and its ongoing improvements.
Rivian hinted at some of those autonomy-centric improvements in the works for the Gen 2 R1 and R2 EVs, which include point-to-point, eyes-off, and personal Level 4 driving capabilities. Rivian founder and CEO, RJ Scaringe, spoke to the new tech debuting at AI and Autonomy Day:
I couldn’t be more excited for the work our teams are driving in autonomy and AI. Our updated hardware platform, which includes our in-house 1600 sparse TOPS inference chip, will enable us to achieve dramatic progress in self-driving to ultimately deliver on our goal of delivering L4. This represents an inflection point for the ownership experience – ultimately being able to give customers their time back when in the car.
Last but not least, the upcoming R2 made an appearance, cleverly “dressed” as R2D2 from Star Wars. What was more interesting, however, was that the R2 was equipped with a new piece of autonomy tech new to Rivian EVs – LiDAR.
That’s right; today, Rivian confirmed that it plans to integrate LiDAR into future R2 models, alongside the previously mentioned ACM3. Per Rivian:
LiDAR will augment the company’s multi-modal sensor strategy, providing detailed, three-dimensional spatial data and redundant sensing, and improving real-time detection for the edge cases of driving.
Here’s a peek at how it works:
How are we feeling? I know I just threw a lot of technical jargon at you, but here’s the gist – Rivian is continuing to develop, introduce, and integrate its own in-house technologies. Today’s was a purpose-built silicon chip and software-centric autonomy platform bolstered by AI.
LiDAR is likely to be introduced in R2 next year, and future models beyond that, and new autonomy capabilities are on the way (for a fee). That will include more hands-free-friendly routes around the US and Canada. Exciting stuff all around from Palo Alto.
Electrek’s take
While we will still need to see Rivian actually roll out these AI and autonomy technologies to owners for real-world use (and critique), it is exciting to see the American automaker not only deploying technologies like software-first autonomy platforms and silicon chips, but also developing them in-house.
Rivian is by no means the first to do so (Tesla introduced its FSD silicon chip years ago, and several Chinese automakers have followed suit). However, it’s still quite encouraging to see Rivian put a pony in the race to true, Level 4 self-driving.
I also find it interesting (while not surprising) that Rivian has chosen to integrate LiDAR into the R2 to support autonomy as part of its multi-modal approach discussed above. LiDAR remains a hot topic as Tesla still swears by vision cameras and has been joined by other recent converts, such as XPeng Motors. Meanwhile, most other OEMs still see LiDAR as the long-term best option, especially when paired with other sensors.
Rivian has opted for that same route to autonomy, and I can’t disagree with the decision. From a business standpoint, owning IP is a significant advantage, and it’s exciting to see Rivian continuing to develop such technological advancements internally, similar to other American EV brands like Tesla and Lucid.
Their focus on EVs not only promotes a sustainable future but also gives these companies more freedom to invest more heavily in one form of technology (BEVs) compared to legacy automakers, who must spread their R&D budgets across combustion, hybrid, PHEV, and BEV models.
Automakers like Rivian, Lucid, and Tesla have a few proprietary aces up their sleeves that they could one day wield toward other OEMs, whether that’s building and selling that hardware or software to them, or even licensing it. Take, for example, Rivian’s agreement with the Volkswagen Group, which includes EVs from Scout Motors.
Right now, I’m sure those brands are utilizing most of their technology in their own models, but developing their own motors, inverters, chips, and software platforms does have its advantages, whether that’s in Rivian EVs or other makes and models.
I’m personally excited to see Autonomy+ roll out to my Gen 2 R1S and will be sure to test the expanded Hands Free routes when I can. That’s all for now; thank you for reading.
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