Watts & Weights #1

​We will have 2 presenters share demos of what they've been building at the intersection of AI and energy, with Q&A.

​Presenters:

• ​John Dean, CEO and Karen Ye, Head of Commercial Growth at Windborne Systems. Windborne fuses data from long-duration weather balloons with state-of-the-art AI models to produce the most accurate weather forecasts. They run the world’s largest constellation of long-duration weather balloons: 600+ in the air at once, flying 40+ days each and steering autonomously. The data feeds WeatherMesh, its AI forecast model, which beat Google DeepMind’s GraphCast and ECMWF’s leading ensemble model on accuracy in 2024. Its observations are now assimilated into NOAA’s Global Forecast System, and customers include the National Weather Service, Air Force and Navy. WindBorne tripled both its fleet and revenue in the past year and has raised $62M+ from Khosla Ventures, Galvanize, Lux and others, most recently a $37M Series B at a $250M valuation.

• ​Brian Korgaonkar, CPO at Solfacil. Solfácil is Brazil’s leading solar financing platform. Founded in 2018, it has financed roughly $1B of distributed solar, more than 145,000 systems and about 1 GW of rooftop capacity, around 1% of Brazil’s midday solar generation. It works through 20,000+ installers and has raised over $850M in total capital (roughly $175M of equity and the rest debt) from investors including SoftBank, QED, Valor and Fifth Wall, plus IFC. It is also Brazil’s largest green bond issuer, per the IDB, and now holds a Central Bank license to operate as a financial institution.