Inevitable

Ben Eidelson, co-founder of climate and energy fund Stepchange Ventures, explores the electric grid’s journey from J.P. Morgan and Pearl Street to today’s infrastructure crunch. They revisit the AC/DC battle, Samuel Insull’s utility model, transmission bottlenecks, data centers, batteries, and the transformation toward a more digital, DC-based grid.

Jeff Lawson, technology entrepreneur and Twilio co-founder, is now tackling fusion energy at Inertia. He discusses turning laboratory physics into a commercial business, modernizing lasers with semiconductor technology, and mass-manufacturing fusion fuel targets. The conversation also explores experimental startup culture, utility-friendly plant design, AI’s surging power demand, and fusion’s potential to decarbonize heavy industry.

Charlie Nitschelm, co-founder and CEO of Uplift, previously engineered hardware at SpaceX and Starlink. He discusses designing 90-square-foot homes that arrive fully assembled, deploy by forklift, and operate off-grid without foundations or skilled labor. The conversation explores workforce housing, disaster response, global shipping, ADUs, connected home fleets, manufacturing at scale, and the economics of getting people housed faster.

Michael Thomas, founder and CEO of CleanView, tracks clean energy and data center infrastructure. He uncovers Amazon’s massive Texas gas project and explores why AI companies are building off-grid power, from Meta’s tent-based campuses to xAI’s Colossus. The conversation examines data center backlash, electricity prices, water scarcity, local pollution, and whether AI’s power race will accelerate clean energy or extend the gas era.

Alan Cooper, co-founder and CEO of Miami-based ON.energy, brings experience across oil and gas, geothermal, batteries, and grid services. He discusses the company’s AI UPS, an electrical firewall shielding the grid from volatile AI data center loads. Topics include proprietary power controls, simplifying interconnection, hardware validation, bootstrapped growth, and turning data centers into active grid assets.

Siva Yellamraju, co-founder and CEO of Fourier, brings a software and data-center background to the energy world. He explores why on-site hydrogen could transform multi-day and seasonal storage, how Fourier combines hydrogen with lithium-ion batteries in a microgrid, and why data centers are driving demand for cleaner diesel alternatives. He also discusses India’s manufacturing potential and his leap into physical infrastructure.

Willie Phillips, former FERC chairman and current Holland & Knight partner, led major grid and transmission reforms. He talks about how regulators really work. He highlights the need for faster, coordinated transmission planning, smarter interconnection processes, and how surging AI, data centers, and electrification stress the grid. He also explores large loads, behind‑the‑meter generation, and the rise of hyperscalers as power players.

Yasir Arafat, co-founder and CTO of Aalo Atomics and former lead of the MARVEL microreactor program at Idaho National Laboratory, talks about hitting reactor criticality fast. He recounts the tense final hours, how their physics models tracked reality, and why factory-made, sodium-cooled modular plants could speed deployment and cut costs for AI data centers.

Fiona Spruill, CEO of Overstory and early team member who scaled the company from mapping startup to resilience platform. She talks about how satellite and aerial imagery plus AI spot vegetation threats and prioritize work. Short takes cover wildfire fuel detection, integrating data across utility silos, selling tech to utilities, and navigating a major leadership transition.

Arch Rao, founder and CEO of SPAN, builds smart electrical panels and platforms for grid digitization and residential AI compute. He discusses SPAN’s growth from home panels to utility-grade Edge, how unused home power can host distributed AI nodes, the homeowner economics of free panels and batteries, and why software-defined power could transform grid infrastructure.