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Saul Griffith is an Australian–American inventor and renewable electricity advocate. He is the founder or co-founder of multiple companies, including Otherlab, Makani Power, Rewiring America, and Instructables. As of June 2026 he is chief scientist of OtherLab.

Early life and education

Saul Griffith grew up in Sydney, New South Wales.[1] His mother is a wildlife artist, early Greenpeace activist and printmaker, while his father is a retired professor.[2]

Griffith graduated from the University of New South Wales with a B.MET.E[citation needed], and then, in 2000, from the University of Sydney with a Master of Engineering degree.[3] He won a scholarship to MIT Media Lab in Boston, Massachusetts, to study towards a PhD, that he completed in 2004. The subject of his thesis was “self-replicating machines”. They were one of the first instances of artificial replication being demonstrated using real physics.[4]

Projects

Griffith is the co-founder and as of June 2026 chief scientist of OtherLab, a research and development company working on computational manufacturing and design tools[5] and applying those tools to projects such as inflatable pneumatic robots and prostheses,[6] novel approaches to heliostat design,[7] and applications of computational origami to the design of pressure vessels (e.g. for compressed natural gas) in arbitrary shapes.[8] Otherlab’s R&D is guided by a vast map of energy flows in the US economy,[9] which they use to identify key leverage points in building a more sustainable energy economy.[citation needed] Griffith used this energy flow mapping for Rewiring America, a nonprofit organization working on electrification,[2] of which he is a co-founder.[10] He argues that the United States can create 30 million jobs, save consumers money, boost energy resiliency, and accelerate achievement of a net zero economy.[11]

Previously, he was a co-founder of Squid Labs,[12] Makani Power,[13] Instructables, Wattzon, HowToons, OptiOpia, Potenco, Sunfolding, Other Machine Company, and Monkeylectric.[14][15]

Griffith giving a talk at Poptech 2008
Griffith in 2008

Personal life

Griffith lived in San Francisco for many years.[16] He married Tim O’Reilly‘s daughter Arwen,[17] and they have two children.[18] After around 20 years in the US, he relocated with his family to Australia during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, settling in Wollongong, New South Wales.[1][2]

A portrait of Griffith by artist Jude Rae was highly commended in the 2022 Archibald Prize.[19]

Publications

  • Electrify: An Optimist’s Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future (2021). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT University Press. ISBN 978-0-262-04623-7 (Hardcover edition) ISBN 978-0-262-54504-4 (Paperback edition)
  • The Big Switch: Australia’s Electric Future (2022). Collingwood, Victoria: Black Inc. Books. ISBN 978-1-76064-387-4 (paperback edition).
  • The Wires That Bind: Electrification and Community Renewal (2023). Quarterly Essay 89. Collingwood, Victoria: Black Inc. Books. ISBN 978-1-76064-420-8 (paperback edition).
  • Plug In! The Electrification Handbook (2025). Collingwood, Victoria: Black Inc. Books. ISBN 978-1-76064-515-1 (paperback edition).

References

  1. ^ a b Seccombe, Mike (5 February 2022). “The Joe Biden adviser living in Wollongong”. The Saturday Paper. Archived from the original on 22 July 2025. Retrieved 11 June 2026.
  2. ^ a b c Pannett, Rachel (29 May 2021). “An Australian inventor wants to stop global warming by electrifying everything”. The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 20 July 2025. Retrieved 17 June 2022.
  3. ^ “Meet the class of 2007: Saul Griffith”. MacArthur Fellows Program. MacArthur Foundation. 28 January 2007. Retrieved 21 June 2017.
  4. ^ Griffith, Saul (September 2004). Growing Machines (PhD thesis). Massachusetts Institute of Technology. hdl:1721.1/28780. Retrieved 18 November 2024.
  5. ^ “About”. Otherlab. Archived from the original on 6 June 2026. Retrieved 11 June 2026.
  6. ^ “Solve for X: Saul Griffith on inflatable robots”. youtube.com. 10 February 2013. Archived from the original on 12 December 2021.
  7. ^ “Novel, Disruptive Approaches to Heliostat Design”. sunfolding.com.
  8. ^ “Conformable Tank”. otherlab.com.
  9. ^ Peters, Adele (9 August 2016). “This Very, Very Detailed Chart Shows How All The Energy In The U.S. Is Used”. Fast Company. Retrieved 14 November 2018.
  10. ^ “Meet the team”. Rewiring America. Archived from the original on 9 May 2026. Retrieved 11 June 2026.
  11. ^ Roberts, David (6 August 2020). “How to drive fossil fuels out of the US economy, quickly: The US has everything it needs to decarbonize by 2035”. Vox.
  12. ^ billysorrentino. “Rogue Inventor Saul Griffith Is Radicalizing R&D — With Inflatable Arms”. Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 17 June 2022.
  13. ^ “Makani”. X, the moonshot factory. Retrieved 17 June 2022.
  14. ^ Holthouse, David (6 December 2007). “How $500,000 can save the world”. Fortune Small Business. Archived from the original on 20 November 2007. Retrieved 19 September 2010.
  15. ^ Coxon, Sara-Katherine (22 July 2020). “Saul Griffith”. Climate One. Retrieved 17 June 2022.
  16. ^ “September 15, 2010”. The Colbert Report. 15 September 2010. Comedy Central. Archived from the original on 29 July 2016.
  17. ^ Owen, David (17 May 2010). “The Inventor’s Dilemma”. The New Yorker. Retrieved 14 November 2018.
  18. ^ Kalish, Jon (14 June 2019). “Inside Otherlab’s World of Flying Inventions and Elastic Machines”. PCMag UK. Retrieved 17 June 2022.
  19. ^ “Archibald Prize Archibald 2022 work: The big switch – portrait of Dr Saul Griffith by Jude Rae”. Art Gallery of New South Wales. Retrieved 4 March 2023.