Puzzle — Rossi's Partner Profile

Okay everyone, since it’s almost Christmas, and since we’re still in waiting mode, here’s a game people might like to play.

We have precious little information about Andrea Rossi’s partner organization, but let’s see if we can hazard a guess about the kind of organization that Rossi’s partner might be, based on the information he has revealed.

I’d like to start by quoting our esteemed ECW commenter, 49er, on the topic who today wrote:

It seems entirely possible that Rossi’s partner may not be the huge multinational that many of us envisaged/hoped, but a relatively small company with limited manufacturing facilities. Such a company might be able to field 16 or so engineers to assist AR, and to supply research instruments and prototype engineering on demand, but would not be in a position to build a large prototype generator set (commercial series-produced gensets can cost many millions, and a prototype would cost a multiple of that).

I think 49er may not be far off the mark.

One clue that I don’t think has been discussed much is the fact that Rossi says he is now the ‘Chief Scientist’ of the new organization. It would be a huge step for a large multinational company to hire Rossi directly into the position of chief scientist without any press release, or at least someone within the organization reporting on it. Also, if the company is a public company, they would probably legally have to report the hiring such a key administrative officer. A chief scientist presiding over a team of 16 scientists or engineers would not seem to fit the profile of a company like General Electric (which has a workforce of over 300,000)

Other clues that Rossi has given are: The company is based in the United States, it has some kind of experience working in China, and it is already working in the energy sector.

So, I’ll throw it out to the community here — given what we have been told (admittedly very little), what kind of company profile do you think we’re looking at?