Venture Fusion

It seems nuclear fusion has finally entered the investment horizon of private capital. Notably Sam Altman put $375M into Helion.

This kind of reminds me of the very very early days of SpaceX, when space transportation was still the domain of states and governments, considered too risky and too capital - intensive for the private sector. But as the SpaceX story tells us, when the private sector moves in, we can expect rapid progress and innovation.

The most known nuclear fusion project today is probably the ITER, started in 2007, with the budget reaching probably the order of $100B and still NOT being able to deliver overall positive energy balance. ITER clearly is a brute-force solution to the problem, somehow comparable to the Apollo space program. Throw any amount of money and energy in and don't care about the return, just reach the goal. This is not what any private capital wants.

On the other hand there probably are hundreds of alternative methods to extract nuclear fusion energy and this is where innovation and out-of-the-box thinking is needed. Helion is definitely one example. But it is not the only game in town - there is HB11, tae Technologies, General Fusion and others.

What is really surprising to me is the $1T+ stock market darlings do not move into that space. Clean energy is certainly much more important problem to solve than a full self driving car, but hey, convenience sells, and burning coal is not that inconvenient to an average investor.