The sleuths at lenr-forum.com have uncovered some pretty convincing evidence Bill Gates aka William H. Gates III made a $6 million dollar donation to the Texas Tech Foundation “to be expended expeditiously and essentially entirely on research for the express purpose of … obviating the major extant technical ambiguities surrounding the set of phenomena in metal hydrides generally known as Anomalous Heat Effects (AHE).”
The name of the research entity is Seashore Research, LLC, headed up by Robert Duncan and assisted by Michael McKubre, formerly of SRI International.
While poorly redacted, the signature of the donor from Seattle, Washington appears to be that of William H. Gates III, when compared to his actual signature.

Bill Gates has been linked to LENR research before. During a trip to Italy he visited the national agency for new technologies, energy and sustainable economic development (ENEA) where scientists have made significant progress towards a working design for low energy nuclear fusion using a palladium core. ENEA and Professor Vittorio Violante are earmarked for $550,000 in contract expenses.
In June of 2014, Gates wrote a blog titled “We need Energy Miracles” to stress the importance of new technologies like LENR.