Galvanize

Coming out of our annual Solutions Summit, its clear the next era of economic growth will be built by the people scaling both physical and digital infrastructure, from clean power and grid modernization to AI systems, advanced materials, critical-mineral supply chains, and so much more. We’re deeply grateful for the leaders across energy innovation, AI, and reindustrialization who push this work forward with us, and as we head into the holiday stretch, we’re inspired by what this community is building: an economy defined by electrification, intelligence, and execution at scale.

“Load growth is good.” That was Patti Poppe's powerfully simple message at our Solutions Summit last month. The Pacific Gas and Electric Company CEO focused on execution, and on reframing the role of utilities in the new economy. For the first time in decades, California’s electricity demand is rising, powered by EVs, electrified buildings, and AI data centers. Poppe argued that if this growth is managed intelligently, new demand can actually lower rates by spreading fixed costs across more kilowatt-hours. She shared a story from PG&E’s redesign of a Tesla Supercharger site: Engineers initially projected a 4–7 year timeline. By using digital modeling and flexible load management, PG&E delivered 99% of required power immediately, deferring only the peak-day constraint. “We can build faster if we design smarter,” she said. “Utilities are the infrastructure that makes scale possible.” Her message resonated across the Summit: utilities aren’t bottlenecks, they’re partners in building the next economy.

Ryan Corbett, CFO of MP Materials, a Galvanize Global Equities portfolio company, joined us at our annual Solutions Summit to share how MP has become the only fully integrated mine-to-magnet operation in the United States, a linchpin for electric vehicles, wind turbines, and national defense. From its rare-earth mine in California’s Mojave Desert to its new magnet manufacturing facility outside Dallas–Fort Worth, MP is restoring an industrial chain that vanished from the U.S. more than two decades ago. Corbett made clear that this isn’t a speculative bet, it’s about national security. Today, the U.S. relies on China for roughly 95% of the magnets essential to EV drivetrains, grid components, and precision defense technologies. To change that, MP signed a landmark Department of War partnership earlier this year, combining capital investment, price floors, and long-term offtake agreements to guarantee domestic supply, effectively rewriting the playbook for American industrial policy by pairing public-sector certainty with private-sector execution. “We’re not asking to be subsidized,” Corbett said. “We’re building to be competitive at scale.”

Today we announced that Tom Steyer has taken a formal leave of absence and stepped down as Co-Chair. Built for the long term, Galvanize continues its growth trajectory led by CEO and Co-Chair Kathryn (Katie) Hall, alongside Co-Chair Sec. John Kerry and a seasoned leadership team across its platform and investment strategies. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eauH6KBZ

“AI is necessary for net zero —but not a guarantee.” That was the message from Dr. Amy Luers, PhD, Microsoft's Head of Sustainability Science and Innovation, who reframed the AI–climate debate around consequence, as opposed to capacity, at our Solutions Summit last month. AI’s footprint today is modest: data centers represent just 0.5% of global emissions, and even at current growth rates, the IEA projects that number will remain under 1% by 2035. The upside? Enormous. AI could enable emissions reductions equal to 13% of the global gap by 2035, even under conservative assumptions. Luers outlined three pathways where AI can drive decarbonization: ⚡ Predict and optimize complex systems, from grid performance to industrial efficiency. 🔬 Accelerate discovery and development by designing battery materials that use less lithium, for example. 🧠 Boost workforce capacity through streamlined permitting, infrastructure planning, and climate-data analysis. Yes, rapid data-center growth can stress local grids. But as Luers put it, that’s an infrastructure challenge, not a climate one. The task ahead is aligning AI’s build-out with grid modernization and decarbonization. Her conclusion: “AI will be the biggest factor defining our climate future. The question is whether we effectively deploy it to accelerate climate progress.”

“Electrons equal intelligence.” That’s how Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s Chief Global Affairs Officer, captured the defining reality of the AI age at Galvanize’s annual Solutions Summit: the capacity to generate clean power will determine national strength. On the eve of the event, Lehane submitted a memo to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy urging the U.S. to treat electricity as a strategic asset. The memo warned that America’s AI leadership depends on closing the “electron gap” with China, which added 429 GW of new power capacity in 2024, compared to just 51 GW in the U.S. Lehane proposed a national goal: build 100 GW of new capacity every year to meet baseline demand, replace retiring generation, and power AI growth. OpenAI’s internal analysis suggests that the first $1 trillion invested in AI-related infrastructure could raise U.S. GDP by roughly 5% over three years. His message was clear: AI’s limits, and its promise, now depend on how fast we can expand and modernize the energy systems beneath it. The builders of this century won’t just write code. They’ll build electrons. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/ev6ygYSM

Galvanize Real Estate won a $200,000 grant last January from Wells Fargo after completing the inaugural IN2 Adopters’ year-long program managed by National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and the team hasn’t wasted any time implementing the decarbonization measures presented. At 295 Logistics Center, an industrial property in our GRE portfolio, we’re piloting two technologies that aim to make the building envelope tighter, resulting in more energy efficient operations. Windows are a large source of energy leakage, so we retrofitted them with the ultra-efficient Winsert secondary window solution from Alpen High Performance Products. We also applied a new type of rooftop coating from EnKoat that aims to keep the building cool, boost solar panel performance, and extend roof life while maintaining roof warranties, which are critical to asset managers. Over the next few months, GRE will work closely with NREL researchers to monitor energy consumption and cost in real time. Stay tuned for the results.

Kingsmill Bond, an energy strategist from think-tank Ember, kicked off Day 2 of our Solutions Summit. His electrotech thesis described a world in which solar, wind, batteries, and electric mobility are no longer peripheral industries, they are the new industrial system – also intertwined with the defense industrial base through critical minerals, advanced materials, and power electronics for drones and other applications. 🔷 Solar and wind now, on net, supply all global electricity-demand growth. 🔷 Costs for small modular energy technologies fall about 20 percent with every doubling of capacity, meaning the opportunity gets bigger every year 🔷 Half of the world has already seen peak fossil-fuel demand. Bond distilled the drivers of the transition into three irresistible forces: physics, economics, and geopolitics, each now pushing in the same direction. “You cannot hold back the tide,” he said. China, he argued, is the “pivot nation,” exporting and deploying the technologies powering this shift. The United States can still lead, but only if it treats electrotech as a question of competitiveness and security and enables its tech leaders to lead in energy as well. Even so, he reminded the room that the transition will not be frictionless. “Change was never going to be easy,” Bond said. “But investors have seen this before. We’ve solved our barriers to change for decades…The ceiling is high, and rising,” he added. Read more insights from the Summit: https://lnkd.in/ev6ygYSM

Upway is leading the transition to sustainable urban mobility, refurbishing and reselling over 100,000 e-bikes across nine countries to date. Its $60M Series C, announced this week, will fuel continued innovation and international expansion. Our Innovation + Expansion team is proud to support a team combining technology and industrial excellence to make sustainable mobility accessible. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gkzEHDVz

The 2025 Galvanize Solutions Summit gathered leaders across technology, capital, and policy -- from investors and policymakers to utilities and AI pioneers -- to examine how the energy transition, artificial intelligence, and industrial renewal are converging into a single economic transformation. Leaders from OpenAI, Microsoft, GE Vernova, Ripple, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, MP Materials, Fervo Energy, Ember, and others joined Galvanize in Sausalito, California last week to tackle a central question: how to scale the physical and digital infrastructure that will define economic growth in the decades ahead. From OpenAI’s call to treat electricity as a strategic asset to Microsoft’s roadmap for climate leadership in the AI age, the programming served as a demonstration that the transition economy is the growth economy. Moreover, that value creation will come from aligning the intelligence revolution with the electrification of everything. “We don’t see climate and energy as sidecars to traditional investing,” said Galvanize Co-Founder Kathryn (Katie) Hall. “They’re the lens through which long-term value becomes visible.”