Bill Gates and his climate-focused investment fund, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, have provided crucial financial backing to several cutting-edge energy storage and battery-related startups. Most notably, BEV has invested in Form Energy (pioneering multi-day iron-air storage batteries for grid resilience), Solid Power (developing solid-state EV batteries), Liquiiod / Malta (thermal energy storage), and lithium extraction innovators like Lilac Solutions and Mangrove Lithium that supply critical materials for advanced battery manufacturing.