At one point, ITM Power struggled to raise £3 million. Dr Graham Cooley recalls how one fund manager’s backing helped keep the business from running out of cash.

Years later, it raised £250 million in a single round.

Between those moments lay years of patient investors, difficult decisions and industrial partnerships that changed the company’s prospects.

In Part One of The Digital Forge, David Richards MBE speaks to the former ITM Power chief executive about the journey from physicist to technology entrepreneur, and the difference between inventing something remarkable and building a business around it.

Graham grew up in Slough with a mother who taught maths and science and a father, the engineer and trade unionist Mike Cooley, who believed technology should serve people. His father gave him a conviction that stayed with him: the future is not something we wait for. It is something we build.

His career took him into the electricity industry, pioneering energy storage, Cambridge startups and the hard commercial lessons of turning research into products. He recalls a three-year intellectual-property battle that ended with the opposing company becoming an investor, and why access to experienced entrepreneurs and the right backers can change a business’s future.

Then came ITM.

Graham explains why he stopped fuel-cell development to concentrate on electrolysers, how partnerships with Linde and Snam unlocked institutional investment, and the long climb from a £12 million market valuation to a peak of £3.5 billion. He also discusses building manufacturing capacity in Sheffield and recognising when the next stage required a different chief executive.

Along the way, he challenges Britain’s approach to energy. His argument is that electricity cannot be considered in isolation: storage, gas networks, hydrogen and industrial demand must be planned together. The technology matters. So do the incentives that determine whether anyone builds it.

Part One is about turning science into industry. Part Two asks who will finance Britain’s next generation of businesses, with a focus on UK stock markets, pensions and growth capital.

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