Rondo Energy

John O'Donnell holds a B.Sc. with Special Distinction in Computer Science from Yale University and has more than 30 years of experience in energy, semiconductor, and supercomputer industries. He co-founded Ausra, a pioneer in solar thermal electric systems, and co-founded GlassPoint Solar, which delivered industrial solar heat at commercial scale worldwide. Before those ventures he was a lead engineer at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. O'Donnell co-founded Rondo Energy in 2020 with Pete Von Behrens, spending two years in Von Behrens' garage developing brick-based heat battery designs before commercializing the system as a thermal energy storage product for industrial decarbonization.

Pete Von Behrens served in the United States Air Force supervising aerospace maintenance teams on U-2S reconnaissance aircraft across three continents before transitioning to technology entrepreneurship. He co-founded GlassPoint Solar with John O'Donnell, serving as CTO and leading its product and engineering strategy through megawatt-scale solar steam deployments. He holds 28 U.S. patents spanning energy storage and solar steam generation, with additional inventions deployed in automotive and consumer devices. Von Behrens co-founded Rondo Energy in 2020 and leads technology development for its brick-based heat battery, which stores renewable electricity as high-temperature industrial heat.