Internet Visionaries Betting On Green Technology Boom
Vast Market, Huge Profit Potential Beckon Investors
Bill Gates, John Doerr and Steve Case believed in the Internet long before Wall Street did. Now, they're betting on the next great "disruptive" technology: alternative fuels and other environmentally friendly products, but this time other investors aren't far behind.
Last year, AOL LLC founder Case launched Revolution LLC, which has invested in companies such as car-sharing service Flexcar that promote sustainable lifestyles. In November, Microsoft Inc. founder Gates committed $84 million to a California company to finance the construction of five ethanol bio-refineries. And last month, Doerr, the venture capitalist who invested early in Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., set up a $100 million fund to invest in "green technology."
To be sure, the investments don't make up a large proportion of their portfolios, and even with oil at $70 a barrel, alternative energy sources are still at the margins of the market. Gates, one of the world's richest men, has committed far more to developing low-cost drugs for impoverished countries. And while Case has committed around $500 million of his own money to Revolution, some of that is going to fund health care and spa investments. But just as two decades ago they saw the Internet as a way to make money and change the world, they now think green technology is poised to make a difference of its own.
"Greentech could be the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century," Doerr said in a February press release announcing that Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the investment fund that helped underwrite many prominent tech start-ups, would raise $100 million for the green technology fund.
In addition to Case, Gates and Doerr, Sun Microsystems Inc. chief executive Scott McNealy last fall played a prominent role in a Business Roundtable task force on sustainable growth strategies.
Sun founder Vinod Khosla has started his own fund to invest in clean tech companies. And Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is financing a Seattle company that is trying to turn canola oil into diesel fuel.
"The green, sustainability movement is going mainstream," Case told The Washington Post last year, and "we want to ride that wave."
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Internet Visionaries Betting On Green Technology Boom
