Fortune Magazine
Al Gore’s next act: Planet-saving VC
The recovering politician is teaming with a legendary venture capitalist and bigtime moneyman to make over the $6 trillion global energy business.We’re sitting in the giant conference room at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, where the partners hold their weekly meetings. After loading his plate with Chinese food from a buffet, Gore is firing detailed questions at the management team of Ausra, a Kleiner-backed company in Palo Alto whose technology uses mirrors the width of a flatbed truck that focus the sun’s energy to generate electricity.
Big-time democrat fund raiser, billionaire Ron Burkle, estimated in a recent NY Times article that Al Gore was worth $2 billion based on his Current TV network, his seats on the boards of Apple and Google and his global, corporate jet carbon emiting high-paid speaking junkets.
Anyone really think Gore would give all this up for politics? No way. He’s busy “fighting the most serious crisis we have ever faced.”
I am in awe of his sacrifice.