About The Event

Nicolas Sauvage (SEP2018) is the President of TDK Ventures, with $350M AUM. TDK Ventures has invested in 37 startups, including unicorns like Groq, Ascend Elements and Silicon Box. Recognized on the Global Corporate Venturing Powerlist for five consecutive years, Nicolas has authored articles on Corporate Venturing and hosts the Corporate Venturing Insider podcast. Nicolas serves on the boards of Analog Inference, AutoFlight, Faction, Mach49, Metalenz, Virewirx, and TDK Ventures. Nicolas has been awarded the Corporate Director Certificate from Harvard Business School.

Karin is a global executive and independent board director with a track record in helping organizations leverage AI and data as strategic assets. She has deep expertise and leadership in big data and artificial intelligence, with a focus on machine learning and GenAI for Energy and Mining and Metals and applications. She has deployed and industrialized software applications in global supply chains and operations. Currently at Google, she serves as Technical Director at the office of the CTO. Her international work experience includes roles in Brazil for Dell Technologies, the US for Microsoft, and Canada as global Chief Data and Analytics officer (CDAO) for Rio Tinto.

Péter Fankhauser is the Co-Founder and CEO of ANYbotics, a Swiss robotics company pioneering AI-driven autonomous mobile robots for industrial environments. With 15 years of experience in robotics and a doctorate from ETH Zurich, Péter has led the development of cutting-edge solutions that enhance safety, productivity, and sustainability in hazardous settings. Under his leadership, ANYbotics has grown into a global enterprise, with offices in Zurich and San Francisco. The company’s flagship four-legged robot, ANYmal, is trusted by industry leaders worldwide in sectors such as Metals & Mining, Power & Utilities, Oil & Gas, and Chemicals. To date, ANYbotics has raised $130 million from leading international and Silicon Valley investors, solidifying its position at the forefront of the AI robotics revolution.

Edgar Auslander is Senior Director, Strategic Partnerships at Meta (f.k.a. Facebook), and is Founding Board Member at The AR Alliance, working on XR (Virtual, Mixed, and Augmented Reality), AI (Artificial Intelligence), and wearables. He initiated and drove the partnership with EssilorLuxottica and redefined Meta AR roadmap with products like Ray-Ban Stories and Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses. He is the Founding Managing Partner at Menlo Business Partners, a consulting firm based in Menlo Park and Paris. He was one of the founders of Texas Instruments’ Wireless Business Unit, bringing it from scratch to $5B in annual revenue. A former Faculty Member at Stanford University and the EDHEC Business School, he teaches Management of Change and Business Negotiation classes at UC Berkeley Extension. He started his career while studying for his MBA by licensing inventions from Columbia University. A Senior Member of IEEE, Mr. Auslander is co-author of “The Applications of Programmable DSPs in Mobile Communications” (Wiley), published numerous articles, and has delivered several keynotes at industry conferences worldwide. He holds an MBA from Columbia University, an MEEng. from Cornell University, and is a Kauffman Fellow, KFP11.

As CEO of SoftEye, where he is pioneering generative-AI “eyes” for smart glasses. An IEEE Fellow in machine learning and AI, he held senior roles at Samsung—overseeing automotive semiconductors and custom SoCs for mobile, wearables, and cloud—and served as President of Qualcomm Korea, managing chipset and software products for mobile, consumer, and automotive markets. As head of Qualcomm’s Korea R&D Center, he developed AI, computer-vision, and speech algorithms that powered voice assistants and ADAS, and earlier co-founded SoftMax (acquired by Qualcomm), commercializing ML for handsets and headsets. A former tenured professor at UC San Diego, he earned his Ph.D. in machine learning from TU Berlin/Max Planck and was named IEEE Fellow in 2011.

Rabin Sugumar co-founded Akeana, a high-performance RISC-V IP startup, and serves as the CEO. Prior to Akeana Rabin was Distinguished Engineer and Chief Architect at Marvell/Cavium and built and led the architecture group for the ThunderX2/X3/X4 Arm server processor line. Prior to Marvell/Cavium, he was at Broadcom where he was one of the lead architects on the server processor that became ThunderX2. ThunderX2 was the first Arm server to achieve single thread and socket level performance comparable to high end Intel Xeon servers and paved the way for Arm servers in the data center. During Rabin’s career, he has also worked on architecture and design of vector processors at Cray Research, early multi-threaded and out-of-order SPARC processors at Sun Microsystems, and InfiniBand adapters at Sun Microsystems/Oracle. Rabin obtained his PhD in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan.

Ritesh Jain is Senior Vice President, Engineering & Operations at Lightmatter leading cross-functional engineering organizations responsible for driving innovation and delivering products. Previously as VP at Intel, Ritesh led hardware development for data centers. He holds a master’s in semiconductor packaging and during the two plus decades of experience in the semiconductor industry, he drove several generations of products into high volume deployments while driving major technology transitions and leading global engineering teams.

Dr. Omkaram (Om) Nalamasu is senior vice president and chief technology officer (CTO) of Applied Materials, Inc. He brings extensive experience and passion to the role of CTO, where he leads the development of disruptive products to address new markets and businesses in partnership with the broader technology ecosystem. He has built a world-class team to support Applied’s leadership in materials engineering. He also serves as president of Applied Ventures, LLC, the venture capital fund of Applied Materials, where he oversees strategic investments in early- and growth-stage companies.

A world-renowned expert in materials science and one of our industry’s most respected forward-thinkers, Dr. Nalamasu has championed a renewed focus on Applied’s global innovation culture through various internal development programs and open innovation methods. He has solidified strategic relationships with universities, government organizations and research institutes around the world.

Dr. Nalamasu joined Applied in 2006 after serving as an NYSTAR Distinguished Professor of materials science and engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he also served as vice president of research. He has held key research and development leadership positions at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Bell Laboratories/Lucent Technologies, and Agere Systems, Inc., and was director of Bell Laboratories’ Nanofabrication Research Laboratory, MEMS and Waveguides Research, and Condensed Matter Physics organizations.

His research interests include nanomanufacturing, nanopatterning, electronic and photonic materials, and lithography, with special emphasis on applying patterning and materials expertise for device fabrication for electronics, photonics and energy applications.

Dr. Nalamasu has made seminal contributions to the fields of optical lithography and polymeric materials science and technology. He has received numerous awards, authored more than 180 papers, review articles and books, and holds more than 120 worldwide issued patents.

In 2017, Dr. Nalamasu was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering for technical innovation spanning materials development, atomically controlled thin-film fabrication, and commercialization in microelectronics and energy generation and storage. He is a member of the board of directors of The Tech Museum in Silicon Valley and serves on several national and international advisory boards. He received his Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.

Nicolas Sauvage (SEP2018) is the President of TDK Ventures, with $350M AUM. TDK Ventures has invested in 37 startups, including unicorns like Groq, Ascend Elements and Silicon Box. Recognized on the Global Corporate Venturing Powerlist for five consecutive years, Nicolas has authored articles on Corporate Venturing and hosts the Corporate Venturing Insider podcast. Nicolas serves on the boards of Analog Inference, AutoFlight, Faction, Mach49, Metalenz, Virewirx, and TDK Ventures. Nicolas has been awarded the Corporate Director Certificate from Harvard Business School.

Nicolas Sauvage (SEP2018) is the President of TDK Ventures, with $350M AUM. TDK Ventures has invested in 37 startups, including unicorns like Groq, Ascend Elements and Silicon Box. Recognized on the Global Corporate Venturing Powerlist for five consecutive years, Nicolas has authored articles on Corporate Venturing and hosts the Corporate Venturing Insider podcast. Nicolas serves on the boards of Analog Inference, AutoFlight, Faction, Mach49, Metalenz, Virewirx, and TDK Ventures. Nicolas has been awarded the Corporate Director Certificate from Harvard Business School.

Geetha Dholakia is a Portfolio Program Manager at TDK Ventures. She is responsible for strategic engagements between Portfolio Companies and global TDK business groups. She is committed to identifying, enabling and nurturing nascent technical ideas to grow into successful business collaborations that improve lives and build a sustainable world.

She brings many years of scientific, technical program management and business development experience. In prior technology management roles, she has worked at NASA Ames Research Center, supporting NASA’s $200 million SBIR/STTR program and in enabling partnerships, business development and technology transfer of NASA Ames’ vast technology landscape. As a scientist, her deep research focus was in two areas, one at the cross-section of physics, materials science and electrical engineering in studying nanoscale systems and another in instrumentation for space missions.

She has a Ph.D. in Physics from the Indian Institute of Science and a Masters in Physics from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, driven by a lifelong curiosity to understand how nature works.

As the founder of DBL Partners and a pioneer and leading player in impact investing, Nancy has demonstrated the potential of venture capital to drive social change and environmental improvement. She is an active voice in the field, frequently writing and speaking on impact and climate investing topics. Nancy serves on the boards of several companies, including Bellwether Coffee, Chestnut Carbon, Rain, Spatial, Zola Electric, and, prior to their public offerings, Tesla Motors (board observer), SolarCity, and Pandora. Prior to founding DBL, Nancy was a Managing Director in Venture Capital at JPMorgan, having started her investment career at Hambrecht & Quist in 1984.

Previously, Nancy worked at Intel Corporation, the State of California, Stanford University, and the Sierra Club.

In 2024, Nancy was awarded the distinguished Impact Leadership award from Impact Capital Managers, and Springboard Enterprise Investor of the Year. In 2023, she was recognized by the Forbes Women 50 Over 50: Investment list, and by the San Francisco Business Times as one of the Bay Areas 100 Most Influential Business Leaders. Among other awards, Nancy was previously named the 2022 Financial Woman of the Year by the Financial Women of San Francisco and to the Forbes 2020 Impact 50 List of the most notable impact investors. She was also a recipient of The Commonwealth Club 2018 Distinguished Citizen Award, the Earth Day Network 2018 Climate Visionary Award, and appeared on Fast Companys 2016 List of Most Creative People in Business.

Nancy serves as a member of the Board of Trustees of the National Geographic Society, where she sits on the Finance and Advancement Committees. She currently serves on the Finance, Philanthropy, and Executive Committees of the inaugural Board of Directors of the Foundation for Energy Security and Innovation (FESI). Nancy is a member and former Chapter Chair of the Silicon Valley Women Corporate Directors Foundation. She is a member and former chair of the Advisory Council of the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University; an advisor to the UC Davis Center for Energy Efficiency; and co-chairs the Yale School of Management Program on Entrepreneurship. She also serves on the Investment Advisory Committee of Prime Coalition, a nonprofit organization that steers and influences capital to support scalable solutions to climate change.

Nancy is a frequent lecturer on impact investing at Harvard Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business, and the Yale School of Management. She is a past member of the C3E Ambassador to the U.S. Clean Energy Education and Empowerment Program, led by the U.S. Department of Energy. From 2001–2019, she was also a founding officer and director of ABC2, a foundation aimed at accelerating a cure for brain cancer. She was also a founding member of the California Clean Energy Fund from 2005 to 2012. She served as an Advisory Board member of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Cyclotron Road, its Clean Energy Incubator from 2014 to 2019.

Nancy received her BA and MA in anthropology from Stanford University, and her MBA from the Yale School of Management.

Nicolas Sauvage (SEP2018) is the President of TDK Ventures, with $350M AUM. TDK Ventures has invested in 37 startups, including unicorns like Groq, Ascend Elements and Silicon Box. Recognized on the Global Corporate Venturing Powerlist for five consecutive years, Nicolas has authored articles on Corporate Venturing and hosts the Corporate Venturing Insider podcast. Nicolas serves on the boards of Analog Inference, AutoFlight, Faction, Mach49, Metalenz, Virewirx, and TDK Ventures. Nicolas has been awarded the Corporate Director Certificate from Harvard Business School.

Jigar Shah is an energy entrepreneur, investor, and strategist who was featured on the 2024 TIME100 list of the world’s most influential people. He is co-Managing Partner of Multiplier LLC, a boutique advisory firm helping clean energy, cleantech, and climate tech companies accelerate their growth. Shah most recently served as Director of the U.S. Department of Energy Loan Programs Office, the federal government’s clean energy investment vehicle. He transformed the agency, overseeing a tenfold increase in loan authority and deploying $108 billion in debt financing for clean energy and advanced transportation projects across the United States. Prior to his government service, Shah was co-founder and President of Generate Capital ($10B AUM), which largely invented low-cost, infrastructure-as-a-service financing. Previously, Shah founded SunEdison, where he pioneered third-party power purchase agreement solar financing. He successfully sold SunEdison for $389 million. Shah also served as the founding CEO of the Carbon War Room, a global non-profit founded by Sir Richard Branson and Virgin Unite to help entrepreneurs address climate change.

Shah is a co-host of the popular podcast “Open Circuit” from Latitude Media. Originally from Illinois, Shah holds a B.S. from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and an M.B.A. from the University of Maryland.

Nicolas Sauvage (SEP2018) is the President of TDK Ventures, with $350M AUM. TDK Ventures has invested in 37 startups, including unicorns like Groq, Ascend Elements and Silicon Box. Recognized on the Global Corporate Venturing Powerlist for five consecutive years, Nicolas has authored articles on Corporate Venturing and hosts the Corporate Venturing Insider podcast. Nicolas serves on the boards of Analog Inference, AutoFlight, Faction, Mach49, Metalenz, Virewirx, and TDK Ventures. Nicolas has been awarded the Corporate Director Certificate from Harvard Business School.

Nicolas Sauvage (SEP2018) is the President of TDK Ventures, with $350M AUM. TDK Ventures has invested in 37 startups, including unicorns like Groq, Ascend Elements and Silicon Box. Recognized on the Global Corporate Venturing Powerlist for five consecutive years, Nicolas has authored articles on Corporate Venturing and hosts the Corporate Venturing Insider podcast. Nicolas serves on the boards of Analog Inference, AutoFlight, Faction, Mach49, Metalenz, Virewirx, and TDK Ventures. Nicolas has been awarded the Corporate Director Certificate from Harvard Business School.

A Partner at Khosla Ventures, Rajesh has two decades of experience assisting and investing in deep tech startups. He manages many of the firm’s investments across renewables generation, storage, hydrogen, industrial decarbonization, plastics, food-tech, healthcare, and advanced manufacturing.​

Previously, Rajesh was the head of Applied Ventures LLC, the venture capital arm of Applied Materials, where he managed a portfolio of 85 deep-tech startups globally, as well as two deep-tech funds in Korea and Taiwan. He led investments and helped build companies, many of which had strong exits, including Enphase Energy, Solid Energy, Rockley, Infinite Power Solutions, Adaptive3D, Tango, Inpria, PlayNitride, and Norsk Ti. Rajesh was recognized amongst the top 100 global CVCs on the Global Corporate Venture (GCV) Powerlist.​

Earlier, he worked at Third Point Ventures and at Lucent’s Bell Labs, where he drove technical assessments and partnerships for several optical, MEMS, and RF device startups, and also led DFR programs for the successful deployment of Lucent’s 10Gb/s and 40Gb/s systems.​

While pursuing his MBA at Harvard Business School, he worked on Deutsche Bank’s cleantech banking team and also worked with KV on companies in solar and water. Previously, Rajesh earned a master of science degree from the University of Maryland and a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, where he was awarded the Shankar Dayal Sharma (President of India) Medal for overall excellence.​

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Ms. Denman brings more than fourteen years of experience in investing in traditional and renewable energy, including leading over $5 billion in wind, solar and storage transactions. Ms. Denman co-leads the investment side of the business and serves on the Investment Committee.

Prior to forming Excelsior Energy Capital, Ms. Denman served as Managing Director, and before that, Assistant General Counsel, at TerraForm Power. Prior to TerraForm Power, she started her career at Jones Day in the Private Equity and mergers and acquisitions groups and then moved to Bracewell to further specialize in energy finance and acquisitions transactions.

Ms. Denman received her JD from Georgetown University Law Center and her BA from Franciscan University.

Page leads Tapestry, a project at X, Alphabet’s innovation lab. Tapestry is building AI-powered tools to make the world’s electric grid visible so everyone can access reliable, affordable, and clean energy. Tapestry works with governments, utilities, energy developers, and major energy users to help them manage, plan, and operate grids powered by diverse energy sources.
Before joining X, Page held roles as a go-to-market and commercial leader and advisor at several start-ups, two of which attained ‘unicorn’ status: Sunrun in rooftop solar energy in the U.S., and Konfio in financial services in Mexico. She was previously co-CEO and founder of Clarus Power, a venture-backed residential solar customer acquisition platform.
Page is an expert in business model innovation, customer acquisition, product design, and scaling hyper-growth teams. She was recognized as one of the top 50 Climate Tech Operators in the 2021 Climate Draft and won Fin Earth’s 101 Women in Climate Award in 2024. She is an advisor and angel investor with her firm Persistent Ventures and she is a limited partner in Powerhouse Ventures. Page is a co-inventor of several U.S. patents in the energy domain. She earned a certificate from the Stanford GSB Summer Institute for General Management and holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from Santa Clara University.

Phoebe Wang serves as the investment partner at Amazon Climate Pledge Fund. She is passionate about bending the world’s emission curve and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Her investment focus area covers climate tech companies in transportation & logistics, energy generation, storage, and utilization, buildings, manufacturing & materials, circular economy, food & agriculture, and carbon removal. She has over a decade experience in climate-tech investing, and started her career as engineer and later startup founder.

Liam is the co-founder and COO of Peak Energy, a company determined to meet the growing global energy demand with sustainable solutions. Prior to Peak, Liam started his career at McMaster-Carr where he had the opportunity to hold 14 very different jobs over the years (everything from website design to managing distribution centers). Following McMaster-Carr, Liam joined Apple in the early years of iPhone growth and assumed responsibility for the semiconductor and sensor business. After a handful of years at Apple, Liam joined Tesla to lead the Supply Chain and Industrial Engineering organizations. Having a front row seat for numerous product development journeys at Tesla -Model X, Model 3, Model Y, Autopilot, Tesla Energy, etc.- was a lot of fun. He subsequently joined Lyft as President of Micromobility and Chief Procurement Officer. Ultimately Liam followed his heart to Zipline, an autonomous drone company focused on transforming healthcare access around the world. As COO, he helped Zipline scale from 30 people and a pilot project in one market to an organization of 1200+ professionals operating at national scale in 8 countries across four continents. After helping the company develop a next generation platform capable of high-volume urban deliveries, Liam was excited to return to working on energy solutions. He feels very honored to be on this journey at Peak with his amazing partners, team, investors, customers, and suppliers!

Emilie is a climate tech entrepreneur and investor with 20 years of experience working at the intersection of climate change and capital markets. She was the founder and CEO of Four Twenty Seven, a climate risk analytics firm that pioneered the use of climate science in financial decisions and was acquired by Moody’s in 2019. Previously, Emilie was Head of Research at Thomson Reuters Point Carbon, where she directed research and modeling on carbon markets and decarbonization. Emilie is also a Board Member of Climate Resilience for All, a gender-focused climate adaptation nonprofit dedicated to the protection of people and livelihoods from extreme heat and all its impacts.

Augustus Doricko is the founder and CEO of Rainmaker, a next generation cloud seeding company. He is a UC Berkeley dropout, Thiel Fellow, and member of the El Segundo hardtech scene. Rainmaker uses weather resistant drones to increase precipitation, and novel radar hardware to measure how much man-made precipitation is created. Our first priority is reversing the desertification of the American west, and ultimately we will terraform deserts into abundant, green, arable land.

Nicolas Sauvage (SEP2018) is the President of TDK Ventures, with $350M AUM. TDK Ventures has invested in 37 startups, including unicorns like Groq, Ascend Elements and Silicon Box. Recognized on the Global Corporate Venturing Powerlist for five consecutive years, Nicolas has authored articles on Corporate Venturing and hosts the Corporate Venturing Insider podcast. Nicolas serves on the boards of Analog Inference, AutoFlight, Faction, Mach49, Metalenz, Virewirx, and TDK Ventures. Nicolas has been awarded the Corporate Director Certificate from Harvard Business School.