Five years on, Sphere’s new site makes the case against oil in your 401(k)

In August 2021, Buena launched a website for a climate startup with a big idea: a fossil-free fund that could sit inside an ordinary 401(k). On June 16, 2026, the new oursphere.org went live. It was built by the same studio, for the same founder, around the same mission. Doug Burnett, Buena’s founder, has been Sphere’s chief creative officer since February 2021, and the new site shows what five years of making a dry subject loud has taught us both.

Sphere’s headline hasn’t changed in spirit. The site still opens on a promise that sounds like a contradiction until you see the numbers: “Save the future. Save for yours.”¹

Your retirement savings are probably drilling for oil

Sphere’s founder, Alex Wright-Gladstein, started from a fact most people never learn. If you have a 401(k), you almost certainly own oil and gas companies, and nobody asked you. Sphere puts it at 99% of Americans with a 401(k).¹

The fix has to work for two very different people. One is the employee who cares about the climate and wants out. The other is the plan fiduciary, who can’t add a fund unless it checks every box a 401(k) requires: diversified, benchmarked and low cost. Every Sphere brand decision since 2021 has been about speaking to both at once.

One of the biggest climate actions you can take may already be sitting in your 401(k).

2021: money talks, so make it shout

The first site went live on August 31, 2021, a few weeks before the fund itself started trading. It was loud on purpose: black backgrounds, a green headline that read “Money talks. Make it shout.”, and a chart of smokestacks rising from the logos of Apple, Amazon, Tesla, Microsoft and Google, each one sized by how much its employees’ 401(k)s held in fossil fuels.

That November, trade press covered the launch of the Sphere 500 Fossil-Free Index Fund (SPFFX), billed as the first fossil-free index fund in the US, built with Reflection Asset Management.² Buena kept going: AtmoSphere (a free tool that shows how much of any company’s 401(k) likely sits in fossil fuels), and a booth for the 401(k) industry’s summit under a line made for the advisors who choose funds: “Have your 401(cake) and eat it too.”

Five years of campaigns, all pointing home

The campaigns grew bigger. In February 2024, the Virtual March to Retire Big Oil sent marchers down Wall Street without leaving home, with a coalition of 55 organizations and more than 50 celebrities and climate voices.³ In June 2025, Actors Retire Big Oil, with Sphere and Stand.earth, asked the SAG-AFTRA pension to divest. Jane Fonda, Mark Ruffalo and Don Cheadle were among the first signers, and the open letter passed 500 actors.⁴⁵

Every one of those moments sent people to the same place, oursphere.org. The site was rebuilt in 2022, packed with new tools for moving your money, and updated again in 2023. By 2026 it had to work harder than any campaign: explain the fund to a fiduciary, convert an angry employee into an email to HR, and stay compliant through all of it.

When Sphere turned three in October 2024, Doug put it simply in a public note to its founder:

The brand Buena built for Sphere borrows from banknotes: engraved portraits, fine guilloche lines and a navy that feels like a bank, warmed up with orange and lilac.

It lets an underdog look established, and lets environmentalists sound like good capitalists.

The new site: calmer, sharper, harder to ignore

The 2026 site trades the black of 2021 for warm paper and engraved portraits. Designs for web, tablet and phone were finished in late May, and the site went live on June 16. It opens with “Save the future. Save for yours.” and a press bar of outlets that have covered Sphere, from Forbes and Bloomberg to The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.¹

From there it walks the visitor down a single argument. Two products come first: the Sphere 500 Fossil-Free Index and AtmoSphere. Next is a chart showing how oil and gas have performed against other sectors. Then the turn: “Despite that, $1 trillion is invested in fossil fuels just through our retirement funds.”¹

The site makes the problem personal by naming employers. A bar chart shows how much each company’s 401(k) plan holds in fossil fuels.¹

And it answers the obvious question, which is how much this matters next to everything else you could do. Sphere’s estimate puts dropping fossil fuel investments ahead of buying an electric car.¹

A page for every way to act

The new site doesn’t end on a feeling. It ends on a to-do list. Each action has its own page with a ready-to-send template: email your HR team, email your 401(k) provider, rally your coworkers, share on social, research your options, or join the AtmoSphere. The fund page lays out the Sphere 500, “the top 500 minus fossil fuels,” holding 407 of the 500 largest US companies. It is available on platforms including Fidelity and Vanguard.¹

Five years ago the job was to get noticed. Now it’s to be trusted and to make acting easy. The mission is the same one Sphere started with: a climate-friendly option in every 401(k), and a reason for everyone with one to ask for it.