Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Jack Ma join forces to invest in clean tech

Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Jack Ma join forces to invest in clean tech
Anmar Frangoul
1 Hour AgoCNBC.com

Lacy O’ Toole | CNBC
Bill Gates
Some of the world's top business leaders will launch a new fund on Monday which will invest over $1 billion in "next generation energy technologies."

The investor-led fund will be known as Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV) and is set to put money into new technologies that will be able to deliver affordable and clean energy.

Members of BEV include Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who will chair the board, Alibaba Executive Chairman Jack Ma, who will sit on the board, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.


"Anything that leads to cheap, clean, reliable energy we're open-minded to," Gates told news outlet Quartz in an interview.

He went on to tell Quartz that investing in the energy sector posed its own unique challenges. "People think you can just put $50 million in and wait two years and then you know what you got," he said. "In this energy space, that's not true at all."

The board and management team will make decisions on where to invest based on several factors, including climate impact and scientific possibility.