John Doerr On Bloom Energy Launch: “This Is Like The Google IPO”

After eight years of operating in quasi-stealth, Bloom Energy came out with a bang today at an event in Silicon Valley attended by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Colin Powell, Larry Page, John Doerr, and executives from eBay, Walmart, Coca-Cola, and FedEx. All of the big-name companies, including Google, are beta customers of Bloom's distributed energy fuel cell technology (which was the subject of a 60 Minutes profile on Sunday and various other stories since then). Doerr, the Kleiner Perkins VC who backed both Bloom and Google, said today: "This Is Like The Google IPO." Except without the IPO part. Doerr was referring to the fact that, like Google, Bloom has kept its business close to its vest until it actually could show some progress in terms of customers and products. Five Bloom energy boxes about the size of a parking space each now provide 15 percent of the power at eBay's campus. Walmart is testing the boxes in two locations where it is carrying 60 to 80 percent of the energy load of an entire store. Google co-founder Larry Page calls the technology a "very big deal" and looks forward to the day that it can expand the number of Bloom boxes Google uses to the point where it can power one of its data centers.