"It was actually pure dumb luck," said Tom Sisto of the successful search for an organic compound that would eventually form the basis of his company's flow battery. Sisto is the chief executive officer and co-founder of XL Batteries, a firm with a bold goal to help "store one third of the world's electrons". He spoke in an interview at the BloombergNEF Summit New York on April 22, 2026, touching on the duration, cost and scalability of a battery technology that doesn't rely on complex global supply chains for metals.