20VC: Leo Aschenbrenner's Largest Holding: Inside the $90BN Bloom Energy | Why Electricity, Not AI Models, Will Decide the Winners of the AI Race | Why We Are Not in an AI Capex Bubble | Energy Sovereignty and The Future of Power with KR Sridhar

**KR Sridhar** (0:00)
To lose is something I simply cannot contemplate. There's nothing that I do where I put effort, I put time, and I think of failure as an option. Any revolution, and I would call AI absolutely a revolution, it's almost a hockey stick on a hockey stick. Clearly, electricity becomes the key factor. We believe bringing power to the edge has to happen.
Electricity in the world is a $5.5 trillion market. Last year, our revenues were $2 billion. When power is democratized, access is not restricted by people who are in power. And that's true democracy. I would say don't short the US, don't short Silicon Valley.

**Harry Stebbings** (0:41)
This is 20VC. Today, the largest position in Leo Aschenbrenner's fund, which makes up 16% of his fund, is in the hot seat, baby. KR Sridhar, founder and CEO of Bloom Energy, joins us in the studio. Now, KR's journey is wild. Former NASA rocket scientist who worked on Mars missions before founding the energy company that is Bloom, 25 years building a company he never once doubted would work. My word, that is a desert to go through. Today, the market cap is approximately 93 billion, up over 1500% in a single year. Revenue hit $2 billion in 2025, up 37% year on year, driven almost entirely by, yup, you guessed it, the AI data center demand. This was a really special show for me to do. Having been a fan of Leo Aschenbrenner for a long time, I now see why he's so all in on Bloom Energy. But before we dive into the show today, did you know that industry average for booking a business trip is 45 minutes? That's a massive waste of your team's time. Well, with Nivan, your employees can book a trip in just seven on average. Nivan is the AI powered travel and expense platform designed for companies that value efficiency. It drives real business impact through high employee adoption and automated policy control. Now, the built-in AI approves in-policy bookings and blocks the rest automatically. This allows finance teams to stop chasing receipts and skip the month and chaos. And you get this real-time visibility that can save your company up to 15% on your travel budget. And that's why leaders like Visa, Stripe, Figma and even Anthropic rely on Nivan these days. Go to nivan.com/20vctoday to see for yourself. And you'll get a chance to win two business class flights anywhere in continental US. No purchase necessary, rules apply. Head over to nivan.com/20vc now. Once Nivan simplifies the travel, Airwally simplifies the spend behind it. Founders, let's get real about the growth tax. You've raised VC funding and you're scaling globally and it's no longer about shipping product. It's about orchestrating operations across continents. But suddenly, your payments and finance stack is choking your growth. You're logging in to lots of different banking portals, waiting days for transfers and reporting across entities. It's operational drag and it's at your scale. It's costing millions. That's why I'm so excited to partner with Airwallets. Airwallets are more than just a banking alternative to HSBC or Citi. Airwallets brings you an intelligent financial operating system that powers how global businesses operate and grow, allowing you to manage and automate banking, treasury, payments and spend. The most exciting part for me, they're heavily investing in agentic finance. If you're scaling globally, you need a banking and finance platform that's borderless, real-time and intelligent. Check out Airwallets today and see how they're helping thousands of businesses like Canva, McLaren and Deal. Scale at airwallets.com/20vc.
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