Steven Chu (Chinese: 朱棣文; pinyin: Zhū Dìwén) is an American physicist and the 12th United States Secretary of Energy. Chu is known for his research at Bell Labs in cooling and trapping of atoms with laser light, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997, along with his scientific colleagues Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William Daniel Phillips. At the time of his appointment as Energy Secretary, he was a professor of physics and molecular and cellular biology at the University of California, Berkeley and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where his research was concerned primarily with the study of biological systems at the single molecule level. Previously, he had been a professor of physics at Stanford University. He is a vocal advocate for more research into renewable energy and nuclear power, arguing that a shift away from fossil fuels is essential to combating climate change. For example, he has conceived of a global "glucose economy", a form of a low-carbon economy, in which glucose from tropical plants is shipped around like oil is today.

Elon Musk (born June 28, 1971) is a South African-born American business magnate, engineer and inventor. He is best known for co-founding SpaceX, Tesla Motors and X.com, which later became Paypal after acquiring the service. He is currently the CEO and Chief Designer of SpaceX, CEO and Product Architect of Tesla Motors and Chairman of SolarCity. While at those companies, Musk co-designed the first viable electric car of the modern era, the Tesla Roadster, a private successor to the Space Shuttle, Falcon 9/Dragon, and the world's largest Internet payment system, PayPal.

Elon Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, the son of a Canadian-American mother and a South African father. His maternal grandfather was from Minnesota, and had moved to Saskatchewan, where Musk's mother was born. His father is an engineer and his mother is an author, nutritionist and model, appearing on the cover of New York Magazine in 2011 and a Time Magazine supplement in 2010.

Musk bought his first computer at age 10 and taught himself how to program; by the age of 12 he sold his first commercial software for about $500, a space game called Blastar.

William Henry "Bill" Gates III (born October 28, 1955 in Seattle, Washington) is an American business magnate, computer programmer and philanthropist. Gates is the former chief executive officer (CEO) and current chairman of Microsoft, the world’s largest personal-computer software company he co-founded with Paul Allen. He is consistently ranked among the world's wealthiest people and was the wealthiest overall from 1995 to 2009, excluding 2008, when he was ranked third; in 2011 he was the wealthiest American and the second wealthiest person. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of CEO and chief software architect, and remains the largest individual shareholder, with 6.4 percent of the common stock. He has also authored or co-authored several books.

Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. Gates has been criticized for his business tactics, which have been considered anti-competitive, an opinion which has in some cases been upheld by the courts. In the later stages of his career, Gates has pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, established in 2000.