A Message from KR Sridhar

In a world where everything is going digital and electric, new and unprecedently high levels of electricity availability and reliability will be required. Read KR’s thoughts on electricity in today’s digitized world:

The Beginning of Bloom

Bloom Energy traces its roots to work performed by Dr. KR Sridhar, Bloom founder and Chief Executive Officer, in connection with creating a technology to convert Martian atmospheric gases to oxygen for propulsion and life support. Dr. Sridhar and his team built a fuel cell for NASA™ capable of producing air and fuel from electricity generated by a solar panel.

They soon realized that their technology could have an even greater impact here on Earth.

In 2001, when their NASA™ project ended, the team decided to continue their research and start a company. Originally called Ion America, Bloom Energy, was founded with the mission to make clean, reliable energy affordable for everyone on earth.

In 2002, John Doerr, and Kleiner Perkins became the first Bloom Energy investors. Kleiner Perkins was legendary for its early investments in other industry changing companies, like Google, Amazon.com, Netscape, and Genentech, but Bloom Energy was its first clean tech investment. In fact, at that time, clean tech was not even really a word.

With financing in place, the team packed three U-hauls and headed to NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley to set up shop. Over the next few years, the technology quickly developed from concept, to prototype, to product, as the major technological challenges were solved and the systems became more powerful, more efficient, more reliable, and more economical.

In early 2006 Bloom shipped its first 5kW field trial unit to the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga. After two years of successful field trials in Tennessee, California, and Alaska, to validate the technology, the first commercial (100kW) products were shipped to Google in July 2008.

Since that time Bloom`s Energy Servers® have helped our customers generate millions of kWhs of electricity and eliminate millions of pounds of CO2 from the environment.

From humble beginnings on Mars, Bloom Energy is now changing the Earth for the better.

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