How Bill Gates’s fellowship program is adapting to global uncertainty

There’s plenty of uncertainty to go around this year, including a global trade war, shifting policy priorities, and an economy that’s starting to stumble. Breakthrough Energy^[1], a climate tech organization founded by Bill Gates, has also been shifting in response.

The group always placed long bets, though it appears to be reappraising some of them. Its policy team was scrapped in March^[2], for example, and it didn’t continue funding a publication that covered the climate tech world. Still, its investments in startups continue^[3], as does its longest bet, a fellowship program^[4] for budding entrepreneurs.

Breakthrough Energy Fellows^[5], as the program is called, is announcing a new cohort today, TechCrunch exclusively learned. It consists of 45 fellows at 22 different startups, and its makeup reveals how the program is evolving both in response to its own data and to global uncertainty.

“It’s the most global [cohort] that we’ve had to date. Fifty percent of the teams are based outside of the U.S.,” Ashley Grosh, vice president at Breakthrough Energy, told TechCrunch.

Grosh and her colleagues had to sift through around 1,500 applications and referrals, making the program more selective than the world’s top universities. Eleven teams are based in the U.S., six are in Asia, and the remainder are in Canada, Germany, the U.K., and South Africa.

Part of the international focus was driven by a new hub for the fellowship program in Singapore, which the organization opened in August 2024 with Temasek, the country’s investment fund, and Enterprise Singapore, a government agency. 

But it’s also a recognition that climate change, being a global problem, will require solutions from around the world. 

“What are local needs, right? What are the local challenges?” Grosh said. By way of example, she points to the fact that several cohort members are working on hydrogen.

In Asia, “there’s a lot of interest in the hydrogen economy,” Grosh noted. Circularity, or recycling materials back to their original form, or better, is also a priority for the region, given its role as a global factory and all the waste that entails.

The new cohort also has startups working on critical minerals, agriculture, and grid modernization.

Beyond its more global focus, the Breakthrough Energy Fellows program has also shifted its curriculum. Based on observations and feedback from previous cohorts, it is encouraging the new group to think early and often about the economics of the technology they’re developing. Using a framework called techno-economic analysis, they work with “business fellows” — often entrepreneurs with relevant experience — to determine whether and where their idea can find product-market fit. If not, they’ll be nudged to pivot.

“We were seeing a lot of companies come in thinking that they’re going to do one thing, and then they pivot,” Grosh said. “They’re more venture bankable once we’ve helped them through that pivot and validated it.”

Grosh said that nearly all of the teams from the previous four cohorts have raised follow-on funding, and one, Holocene, has already exited^[6]. “That’s a huge measure of success for us,” she said.