Bloom Energy’s 1,300% Rise Forges Billion-Dollar Fortune for CEO

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(Bloomberg) — The race to power data centers has vaulted fuel-cell manufacturer Bloom Energy Corp. from small-cap status into Wall Street’s big leagues, with the stock price up more than 1,300% in the last year.

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The breakneck run has paid off for co-founder and Chief Executive Officer KR Sridhar. The academic-turned-entrepreneur has a 1.7% stake in the company, bringing his total net worth to $1.7 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which is valuing his fortune for the first time.

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Sridhar, 65, co-founded Bloom in 2001 to manufacture solid oxide fuel cells, known as “Bloom Boxes,” which the San Jose-based company pitches as cleaner and quieter alternatives to conventional power-generating systems.

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“What I predicted was not AI,” Sridhar told Bloomberg in an interview this month, speaking about the founding of Bloom. “What I predicted was a digital transformation that is going to happen. And what I predicted was, by now, for the first time in human history, electricity rather than heat as a form of energy becomes the dominant energy that we need.”

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The CEO also holds options in C3.AI Inc., where he sits on the board, but the bulk of his fortune comes from his investments in Bloom.

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A spokesperson for Bloom declined to comment for this story.

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Bloom’s Boom

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Bloom makes fuel cells that produce electricity from natural gas, using a chemical reaction that results in less carbon emissions than conventional power plants that burn the fossil fuel. The company also has versions that run on hydrogen and have no emissions, but one of its key selling points is that gas connections are widely available at sites where its systems can be installed, while hydrogen is not as easy to source.

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Bloom also promises it can deliver its systems quickly, at a time when big tech companies are clamoring for electricity to run their power-hungry data centers. While gas turbines that burn fuel are now backlogged for years and nuclear projects can often take a decade or more to permit and build, Bloom says it can install systems in six months or less.

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Oracle Corp. agreed in April to use 2.8 gigawatts of Bloom components to power data centers after the company installed a fuel-cell system in just 55 days, a month ahead of schedule. In May, Nebius Group NV announced its own partnership with Bloom to use fuel-cell capacity to power its AI infrastructure build-out in the US.

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Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. has pledged as much as $5 billion to deploy Bloom devices at data centers, marking the first investment from its AI fund.

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The wave of commercial wins has translated into strong financial results. Bloom in April reported first-quarter revenue of $751.1 million, handily beating analysts’ expectations, and swung to a $70.7 million profit, compared with a loss a year earlier. Shares are up about 290% year-to-date.