Senior Canadian technology executive Greg Twinney has joined one of Vancouver’s most promising clean-technology startups, General Fusion Inc., as its chief financial officer.
Mr. Twinney, who previously held the same position at Vancouver’s Hootsuite Inc. and e-reader maker Kobo Inc., is joining a company that has raised US$200-million to date from investors, including Amazon.com Inc. billionaire founder Jeff Bezos and Singapore sovereign wealth fund Temasek Holdings.
General Fusion is embarking on a five- to seven-year project to build a test plant to generate electricity from a process in which ultraheated hydrodgen atoms are fused into helium, as happens in the middle of the sun. The process is carbon-free and its key input is water.
Despite its heavy funding to date, General Fusion must raise hundreds of millions of dollars more in the next three to five years to get the facility up and running and prove its commercial viability – a job that will fall to Mr. Twinney.
“The potential for value creation here is massive – not just financial, but the ability to bring carbon-free energy to the world. To join a company that is leading that and has made a ton of traction was for me an easy decision,” the 47-year-old father of four said. “This opportunity is by far the largest opportunity for me [of my career] and the one most closely connected to my passion.”
Chief executive Christofer Mowry said in a statement that Mr. Twinney’s “experience and financial talents will further strengthen our world-class management team and help General Fusion deliver practical fusion technology to the global energy industry.”
General Fusion is one of several Vancouver clean-tech companies to raise significant funding from global investors in the past year.
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Sean Silcoff