Exceptional people drive extraordinary outcomes

Dr. Tom Buttgenbach is CEO of 1st Avenue Capital where he is solving the world’s massive growing power demand for data centers, electrification and decarbonization of industries. His newest endeavor, 1st Avenue Innovations, is incubating advanced power system solutions across hardware, software and system design, productizing power systems to solve for both the failure of the grid and the broken solar value chain with a family of power infrastructure products that are scalable, distributed, hyper-firm, more cost-effective and faster to deploy than any existing solution today. 

Tom has been a driving force behind solar power becoming the most reliable and inexpensive power generation, bringing a systems approach to combine patented system architecture with software, AI and novel business models. Under his leadership, Avantus, (formerly known as “8minute Solar Energy“), became one of the largest and most profitable solar and energy storage companies in the United States and the largest in California, including delivering 17% of Los Angeles’ power until he sold it to KKR in mid-2024. 1st Avenue portfolio companies have delivered over $1 billion in profit and secured over $10 Billion in power purchase agreements and project financings with a pipeline of over 30 GW of solar and 90 GWh of energy storage, capable of powering the homes of more than 20 million Americans day and night.  

A physicist by training with a relentless focus on economics, Tom holds more than 40 patents for advanced solar system architecture, hard- and software and received a Ph.D. in Physics and Astronomy from Caltech, where he was a Fulbright Scholar. Tom is a dedicated environmental steward who serves on the Green Advisory Board of the California League of Conservation Voters, the Advisory Council for the Los Angeles Business Council, and as a member of the Advisory Board of the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI). Tom was recognized as a Visionary by the L.A. Times in 2022 and was named Entrepreneur of the Year for Greater Los Angeles by Ernst & Young in 2020. Tom lives in Santa Monica with his family and is an aviation enthusiast.