Himanshu Gupta

Following on from his educational focus on electrical engineering, Gupta secured a role with AREVA T&D,[7] which later became Alstom. It was a company in India that specialized in the manufacturing and installation of electrical substations and smart grids. In May 2011, Gupta took a sizeable pay cut to begin working for the Indian government, as the country increased its focus on clean energy. This began with India's creation of a National Clean Energy Fund in 2011,[8] with him remaining in that role until 2013.[9] His main role during this period was with the Indian Planning Commission, to oversee certain projects.[7]

India's increased focus on clean energy and Gupta's role for the Planning Commission's renewable energy division meant his level of responsibility increased quickly. In 2012, he was tasked with drafting and creating the countries Renewable Energy Chapter in its twelfth National Five Year Plan. He also authored a second section of the five-year plan on research & development for India's energy sector.[7] This work on the National Five Year Plan made him the youngest lead.[10] His work with the Government of India continued into 2014, where he was the project leader for the India Energy Security Scenarios 2047 report, under the guidance of Montek Singh Ahluwalia. The year 2047 is seen as symbolic for India, as it is the year it will celebrate 100 years of independence.[11] As part of the work on India's policy on energy security, Gupta organised both multilateral and bilateral dialogues with US Department of Energy and the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change.[9]

In 2015, Gupta joined the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment to work with Lord Nicholas Stern on a research paper for India's transition to low carbon energy.[9] A number of conclusions were drawn from the paper, including that India needed to reduce its energy intensity in order to meet global targets to keep the Earth below a 2% temperature rise. Gupta also studied the importance of energy pricing and how it could impact on the speed of adoption of greener technology and fuels.[12] Around the same period, Gupta co-founded the NGO, Sustainable Growth Initiative (SGI), to help businesses and governments reduce their carbon footprints and increase energy security.[13] His work with SGI and his business partner Shrey Goyal led to him featuring in Forbes India's 30 Under 30 list in 2016.[14]

Gupta then moved to Stanford University in 2015 to study his MBA. Gupta worked with Al Gore for a short period during the same year as an expert on India's energy and climate policy.[15] While at Stanford, he met Max Evans and together they co-founded ClimateAI in July 2017.[15] ClimateAI's seed funding was partly provided by Stanford University, along with other backers including professors at Stanford.[16][17]

ClimateAI secured $12 million in its Series A funding round in July 2021.[18] In 2022, Gupta's ClimateAI was recognized as one of TIME magazine's best inventions of 2022. The forecasting tool generates climate predictions for specific local areas up to two decades into the future.[19] At the time of the award, the predictor focused on food and agriculture supply chains, predicting average temperatures, extreme weather and water availability.[20] TIME predicted that future uses for the predictor could include flooding risk for developers.[19] The company is now working with many known brands such as Driscoll's, Oceanspray, Nuveen Natural Capital, UPL among other market leaders.[21]

At Davos World Economic Forum in 2022, Gupta spoke about the difficulty of getting new seeds to market for farmers. He stated that often new seeds that had a higher tolerance to drought for example, could take upto 15 years to enter local markets. With the speed of the change in climate, often seeds would prove to be less effective than initially planned, purely due to the lead time of the process. The artificial intelligence deployed by ClimateAI allows for specific seeds to be chosen based on weather and soil data within hours, instead of lengthy trials often taking years.[4]