Check out what Kairos Power, Stegra, ATOME and others have been up to in their FOAK journey.

Most founders think "execution risk" is one risk. Investors don't. They're worried about four: construction, ramp-up, supply chain, and team. And the reason so many FOAK pitches feel competent on paper but somehow fail to reassure is that founders answer as if it's one question. This week's piece walks through each of the four, with examples from ATOME's Villetta project, JR Energy Solution's nine-month electrode factory build, and what shifted at InterBattery in Seoul last m

March brought a mix of real construction milestones, big financing closes, and the usual parade of announcements that may or may not lead anywhere. Let's sort the signal from the noise. The Good News Stegra (H2 Green Steel) delivered the headline of the month: all electrolyser modules are now installed at their 740 MW green hydrogen plant in Boden, Sweden. That's a real, physical milestone on what is arguably the most important green steel FOAK in the world. The financial

There's a new idea I came upon on how to finance FOAK factories: break the facility into three separate "shells" — the envelope, the piping and MEP, and the secret sauce — and finance each according to its risk profile. The envelope and MEP can supposedly attract debt; only the secret sauce needs equity. The math is appealing: a $100M equity requirement collapses to $35M. I've read the argument carefully (see the link to the original article). The logic of asset unbundling is

Your FOAK isn't stalling because of the technology. It's stalling because of execution discipline. Or the lack of it. I've been re-reading *The 4 Disciplines of Execution* — a corporate management book, not a cleantech book — and it maps onto FOAK reality more precisely than most things written specifically about cleantech scale-up.

Over the past twelve to eighteen months, the automotive industry has behaved in a way that commentators find deeply unsettling: it has cancelled things. Depending on one’s accounting preferences, somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five EV programmes have been scrapped, postponed, or politely redefined across 2025 and early 2026. For some observers, this was sufficient to declare that EV demand had finally met its limits. And yet, 2025 recorded more than 20 million EV s

Choosing the wrong geography can kill a FOAK, but being forced to choose too early almost certainly will. Lyten is moving manufacturing from the US to Sweden and Poland, while trying to keep its FOAK in Nevada. Freyr started in Norway, shifted to the US, and eventually walked away from batteries altogether. In today’s increasingly fragmented world, choosing a location for your FOAK can be central to survival. And too many founders are being pushed to make that choice before t

Today is the first monthly check-in on the 23 FOAK climate tech projects I said I’d track publicly in 2026! FOAKs get talked about more and more, which is definitely a good thing! I’m following up on the developments of the largest and most interesting FOAK projects in climate tech. I first go over the good news, then the bad, and you’ll get an updated table at the end! The good news (actual execution happened) H2 Green Steel (now Stegra) signed a long-term supply agreement

“Things that people assume are going to be easier are often way harder than they think.” If there was one quote about #FOAK, this would probably be it. And it doesn’t matter what you are building - an #SMR or a FOAK chemical plant. The assumptions you make about some steps being easy always come back and kick your ass. The quote comes from Kairos Power CEO Mike Laufer, in a podcast episode of The Green Blueprint. Mike and his team are currently building Hermes-2 - a 50 MW SMR

Who: The A Method for Hiring by Geoff Smart and Randy Street treats recruitment as an execution discipline rather than an exercise in intuition. The core argument is simple and uncomfortable: most hiring failures are not caused by a lack of talent in the market, but by sloppy decision-making. Interviews reward confidence, charm, and familiarity. Real performance, however, shows up later — in execution, judgment under pressure, and consistency over time. The book proposes a s

This is a review of key successful and key failed FOAKs in 2025

Here is my 4-step FOAK Strategy Checklist

Construction sites and factory floors are places I’m far more used to than a laboratory. But last week I was in the Netherlands, meeting a client and visiting two universities to see how their new chemical product is getting ready for its demo project. And I have to say: I haven’t yet seen this level of preparation — on both the R&D and project sides. Every assumption challenged, every risk logged, every experiment linked to a downstream engineering decision. It’s the sort of

Nothing tests a founder’s sanity like having too many “very interested” customers. It’s like speed dating with homework. A few days ago, I spoke with an early-stage founder whose product was attracting a lot of interest. On paper, it looked like a dream: inbound requests from consumer electronics, defence, industrial automation, and even a few overseas corporates. In reality, it was a trap. The team had five people, no sales function, and most of their time was devoted to dev

Your FOAK supply chain doesn’t start when you place the first order — it starts when you design your pilot. Miss that moment, and delays, overruns, and “unavailable parts” will follow. In my new post, I go through five steps to build your supply chain before your FOAK becomes real.

Takeaways from FOAK panel at VDS 2025

We need more capital to bridge the FOAK “valley of death” in climate tech — but not at any cost. Lately, I’ve seen two worrying ideas gaining ground: crowdfunding that asks ordinary people to “invest like VCs,” and proposals to channel pension money into the riskiest stage of startup growth. Both sound democratic. Both are dangerous.

I spoke with a European founder developing his own battery cells. Just getting permits for the mixing and coating stages pushed his project back by three years. Those two stages alone would make up over 60% of total capex. That’s why building dedicated electrode toll-manufacturing foundries for scaleups makes so much sense — they can shortcut years of permitting and tens of millions in investment. At higher volumes, though, around 5–8 GWh, it flips. The economics start favour

Over the years, I’ve distilled some patterns into a five-step framework for finding your clients—tailored to the realities of FOAK and climate tech.

How to build a supply chain for your FOAK