Tech billionaire’s loan to keep Singapore solar dream alive
- Australian Mike Cannon-Brookes’s Grok Ventures will provide the funding after Sun Cable entered administration amid a falling out with its co-founder
- The US$21 billion project aims to construct the world’s biggest solar farm and export the electrons to Singapore via 4,200 kilometres of undersea cable
Billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes’s Grok Ventures will provide a US$45 million loan to keep collapsed renewable energy start-up Sun Cable operational while administrators seek a buyer.
The funding will include a six-month interest-free period, Grok said in a statement on Friday.
Sun Cable entered voluntary administration last week amid a falling-out between Atlassian co-founder Cannon-Brookes and iron ore magnate Andrew Forrest. The billionaires, both investors in the company, are at odds over whether to use clean electricity from a planned giant solar project in Australia for local use, or to export it to Singapore.
News of the injection of finance comes as administrator FTI Consulting told creditors at a meeting on Friday that the company will continue its project development pipeline ahead of its sale. FTI said it expects to appoint bankers soon to run a sale process, which it anticipates will take about three months.
Forrest’s Squadron Energy made an alternative funding proposal that hasn’t been taken up, according to a person familiar with the offer who requested anonymity, as the details are private. Squadron and FTI declined to comment.