Charles Nelson

Charles Nelson is a Commercialization Advisor at Group1, supporting the company's go-to-market strategy across data center, defense, and grid infrastructure. He is a hard-tech commercialization executive with a career built on taking first-of-a-kind energy and materials technologies from concept through funded, operating assets — repeatedly, across multiple sectors.

Charles currently serves as Managing Partner and CEO of Virideas, a holding company focused on next-generation infrastructure and hard-tech commercialization. He also serves on the board of Texas Critical Data Centers (TCDC), giving him direct operating exposure to the mission-critical infrastructure market that Group1's K-Pack and K-Cabinet systems are designed to serve. Prior to Virideas, he served as Chief Operating Officer at Cemvita, where he led the company's restructuring around its core bio-oil feedstock technology and negotiated a one-billion-gallon sustainable aviation fuel offtake agreement with United Airlines, while also leading the spin-out of two independent ventures — Endolith and Gold H2, the latter of which he co-founded and led as CEO. Earlier, Charles co-founded ClearShift from within Greyrock Energy's conversion platform — backed by a $300M private equity commitment — building multiple first-of-a-kind industrial assets across North Dakota, Colorado, and West Texas. He also served as Chief Commercial Officer at Greyrock/Infinium, where he drove the commercial strategy for CO2 as a feedstock that gave rise to Infinium, now one of the leading e-fuels companies globally. He began his career in asset development at MarkWest Energy Partners, which was later acquired by Marathon for $16 billion. Charles holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Iowa State University.

Expertise:

• First-of-a-kind asset deployment: built and sold multiple FOAK industrial plants across different commercial structures and geographies — directly applicable to advising Group1's path from K-Pack pilot to deployed data center and defense systems.
• Large-scale commercial deal execution: negotiated a 1-billion-gallon offtake with United Airlines at Cemvita; brings proven ability to advise on structuring and closing enterprise-level agreements with sophisticated counterparties.
• Mission-critical infrastructure fluency: active board member of Texas Critical Data Centers; brings direct customer-side perspective into Group1's primary beachhead market.