BioLite started back in 2006 as a side project for founders Alec Drummond and Jonathan Cedar who were inspired to find a better way to design a camping stove. Frustrated by carrying bulky gas canisters and feeling like there was a disconnect between being in the outdoors and using fossil fuels, Jonathan and Alec wanted to find a way to cook with wood, but in a smarter, more efficient way.

In 2009, after 3 years of tinkering on the weekends, they had a fully functioning prototype of a wood-burning camping stove and took it to the Ethos Wood Combustion Conference. There, they quickly learned that their technology had the opportunity to achieve much greater impact than they realized; half the planet still cooks on smoky open fires leading to 4 million premature deaths annually. Using the core technology found in the CampStove, Alec and Jonathan bifurcated the business and developed an Emerging Markets division dedicated to designing solutions to alleviate global energy poverty. This took form in The BioLite HomeStove, a forced draft cookstove designed to replace these dangerous indoor fires.