Renaissance Philanthropy’s Chimaera Fund awarded U.S. Air Force contract
Latest fund issues Request for Information.
WASHINGTON D.C./LONDON, Wednesday, February 18, 2026 – Geologic hydrogen, the first new zero-carbon primary energy source discovered in more than 80 years, sits at the heart of a new Renaissance Philanthropy fund gaining momentum and support.
The Chimaera Fund is devoted to responsibly and rapidly scaling geologic hydrogen (geoH₂). Formed from natural geologic processes like the chemical interaction between water and iron in rocks, geoH₂ represents the first time humanity can generate net-positive energy from the universe’s most abundant element. Scientists have estimated about 2% of the hydrogen believed to be in the ground could power civilization for centuries at a fraction of the cost of making hydrogen today.
Today, the Department of the Air Force announced it is exploring the potential of geologic hydrogen as a primary energy resource, by awarding Chimaera Fund a contract to assess the feasibility of deploying geologic hydrogen near Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana, and McConnell Air Force Base, Kansas. The project has issued a Request for Information.
“History is clear that accelerating subsurface innovation requires accessing the subsurface – typically something only industry has been able to afford,” said Ishan Sharma, Director of Chimaera Fund. “The rare instances they’ve shared subsurface data unleashed entirely new energy fields and potential. We saw it with shale, we saw it with geothermal. Every time, the inflection points came from open science, data sharing, and collaboration over effective public policy – something we hope to catalyze in geologic hydrogen.”
Geologic hydrogen has already powered the village of Bourakébougou in western Mali for decades, and attracted over $1 billion worth of investment in more than 100 startups. The question now is whether this resource can be produced at industrial scale – reliably, safely, and affordably.
“By working to scale geologic hydrogen, these companies have an immense responsibility to shape what could be the fastest path to $1 per kilogram of clean H2,” Sharma said, “but markets reliably underfund precisely the things that can compress subsurface learning curves from centuries to years. It’s why we believe the field needs a time-bound targeted philanthropic investment.”
“It’s why we believe the field needs a time-bound targeted philanthropic investment.”
With generous support from a world-class technical advisory board, leading philanthropic foundations, and now the U.S. Air Force, Chimaera Fund will focus on three areas where philanthropy can deliver outsized impact for the entire field:
Catalyzing open-science field demonstrations.
Accumulating and synthesizing high-impact datasets and foundational knowledge in globally accessible databases to promote evidence-based progress and industry best practices.
Advising national and subnational governments in aligning regulations and incentives towards subsurface exploration and deployment.
“If we succeed, we’ll have a real path to eliminating emissions and even lowering costs for the hardest to abate industries like steel, chemicals, and aviation responsible for +30% of global emissions before the massive industrial expansions planned for the 2030s. We’ll also be able to power remote communities or zero-water and zero-emissions data centers alike,” said Sharma.
“But it will take a coordinated revolution to align science, industry, and policy, so every new well teaches the whole field.”