Stefan Zlatev
Deep-tech investor and engineer.
Energy, power and industrial infrastructure.
2014 – 2017
Engineer.
Rolls-Royce. Gas turbines and nuclear propulsion. Chartered engineer.
2019 – 2026
Investor.
Seven years at Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the last as Partner. Supporting more than 20 founders, early and late stage.
- Resource recovery
- Heat storage
- Space propulsion
- Grid transmission
- Low-carbon cement and steel
- Battery materials
- Hydrogen
- Building efficiency
- Agriculture and forestry
Power · deep tech is the core
1939
- Gas turbines The first utility gas turbine runs in Neuchâtel. Still the densest power machine we have, and where I started. 1939
- Nuclear fission Obninsk puts the first reactor on a grid. Back on the build schedule seventy years later. 1954
- Industrial automation Unimate joins a GM line. Automation is how industry gets rebuilt where people are scarce. 1961
- Materials and magnets Neodymium magnets are invented. Critical minerals and magnets now decide who can build motors at all. 1983
- Battery storage Lithium-ion goes commercial. Storage is what makes every other source dispatchable. 1991
- Compute The cloud arrives. More compute per watt, and the power and cooling it needs, is now an energy problem. 2006
- Space An orbital booster lands and flies again. Launch becomes industrial infrastructure. 2015
- Physical AI Robots start to learn rather than be programmed. Factories and field operations follow. 2022
- Nuclear fusion Now an engineering problem, not a physics one. The end of the energy story, and the start of the next. 2030s
Scroll to move through time
2026 → New York City
Builder.
- Invest
- Growth-stage deep tech, North America and Europe.
- Build
- Ideas of my own where AI meets industrial services and manufacturing.
Say hello.
Education
Harvard Business SchoolMBA, 2019
University of CambridgeMPhil Energy Technologies, 2013
University of EdinburghBEng (Hons) Mechanical Engineering with Renewable Energy, 2012. First Class, Class Medal