Fusion doesn't have a normal startup timeline, and investors are fine with that

Presented by Dot Tech Domains, where tech founders find sharp, memorable names for their tech startups. Hello and welcome back to Equity Tech Crunches Flagship podcast about the business of startups. I'm Rebecca Ballon and this is the episode where we bring on industry experts to help us explore a trend in the tech world and dive deep. Today I'm gonna have a little help from my friend, TechCrun senior reporter Tim Deshaun. Hey Tim, how's it going? เกอร์เกอร์เกอร์เกอร์เกอร์เกอร์เกอร์

Yeah, I'm doing really good. I hear you just got back from Fusion Fest in London. Great timing. Uh second of them got back late Wednesday night. It was good. It was pretty interesting. Yeah, the vibe, how how is it? Are we still investing in climate? So

Far so good. This one was just on fusion, which I'd say the vibe there was positive, but maybe pensive, if that makes sense. Um I think they were all thinking everybody wants power yesterday, but they still have a few more years to go in terms of fusion power. Okay. Well I mean it feeds into the broader energy climate conversation. And from what I've read uh in your reporting and from what I've heard from you, climate tech is actually doing pretty well.

You know, sightline climate, which tracks investment in the space. They said venture and growth investment topped forty billion dollars last year, which is not quite as big as the twenty twenty one heyday. But I think it's a lot better than people were expecting giving the mood in Washington. Uh, and energy has a lot to do with that. Today we're joined by Rachel Slaybah, general partner at DCDC, where she focuses on climate, sustainability, and energy investments. Rachel, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much for having me. Excited to be here. Yeah, I'm really excited to get into the weeds with you, but probably not as excited as Tim is. Uh It's true. Yeah. I'm curious, Tim, where how did you two meet and how do you know each other? Did you work on any stories together? I don't think any stories exactly. We kind of run in the same circles, the climate tech and energy circles. Uh I think we met at a breakthrough energy event in London a couple of years ago. Yeah, that's right.

Curious timing, just getting back from London. Yeah. Yeah. So so why are we talking about fusion now? What's changed, right? Fusion has been like thirty years away for forever. So what's what's changing? Yeah. And Rachel, feel free to jump in here. I think a few things have changed. The biggest thing was in twenty twenty four at the end of the year, the national ignition facility at the Lawrence Lawrence Livermore, National Lab.

Yeah. Lawrence Livermore National Lab, they created or they ran the first experiment that generated more energy from a few controlled fusion reaction than was required to ignite it. It's a very specific scientific definition. Um, but it was the first time it happened and it suggested that if we can do this in other contexts, we might be able to transition from kind of a big physics science experiment.

into something that's more engineering driven so that eventually we get on the road to a fusion power plant. That has really accelerated interest in fusion. And really, like many things, that all of a sudden it looks like there's a bunch of interest, it's been built on top of things that have been growing over time. So maybe ten years ago or so there started to be

investment into more kinds of fusion concepts. And that led to kind of renewed research and activity in the sector and a lot more progress. and we had some major investment into startup companies in fusion. And that was the first time there was m kind of a lot of movement outside of federal investment. There have for twenty or twenty five years been a little bit of fusion investment here and there, but really over the last ten years That's accelerated.

You brought up an interesting point, Rachel. And I just want to make sure that my understanding of this is correct. There was kind of a fall off in federal funding for fusion that happened ten to fifteen years ago. Is that about right? And but things had gotten far enough along that private investors felt like they could step in. So there have always been people excited about fusion, willing to invest like what is now called TAE technologies. For example, I think they got venture investment like

twenty or twenty five years ago. Right. There was always like a little bit of activity and US federal funding has been quite inconsistent. So kind of the view from inside the fusion community is fusion was funded at exactly the level to stay alive but make no progress.

And a lot of that funding got taken up by the Eater project, where we that's a big experiment in southern France, an international collaboration where the US would join the project and then step away from the project and then join the project and step away from the project. Um and so there it has just been quite slow for a lot of reasons like that. And so federal funding

has been pretty stagnant and very focused on the science aspect and not really on uh commercialization or energy production. And in part because they weren't making very much progress, it was easy for Congress to say, like, oh well, this is fine. Okay. So then are we at a point where people are thinking about commercialization? I feel like still no, but I mean you can tell me. I mean it's a big push where there is starting to be funding in the fusion sector that is much more

oriented towards building a pilot plant. How do you build a commercialization program? And there's discussion about what's the right part of the Department of Energy for this to live in. It's been in the Office of Science, right? And so there's questions about should it be somewhere else that has more of a commercial mission? And so that has really started to get more traction in the last like year two years.

We can look at certain reports or certain things that other people are tracking in order to determine like how much is fusion going to be something that we're paying attention to, right? So IEA, they feature fusion heavily, I think, in the state of energy innovation report from twenty twenty six.

Um, and so for those who don't know, IEA is a conservative policy facing body. And so Fusion historically, you guys correct me if I'm wrong, has been pretty niche and experimental, but there's been maybe more of a turning point lately. So when IEA starts tracking something, It's an indicator that there's regulatory attention, potential government procurement, and that will de risk capital. So my question for you, Rachel, is what does it mean in practical terms that IEA set a milestone of of

Yeah. Personally, uh d it doesn't mean anything to me, but um maybe there are people who it means something to. Um You said something about a milestone of fusion um plants generating saleable energy by twenty thirty. Do you think that's a real target or is it just trying to get attention?

I th I would be surprised if that happened. Um There are a few outliers, right, Rachel, that think they can move a little faster, but most everybody that I've seen seems to think early twenty thirties at best, maybe later twenty thirties more realistically. Yeah. So that uh metric we were talking about before that Livermore accomplished is called Q. It's the ratio of energy out to energy into the reaction.

So I expect somewhere between one and four startups will hit Q greater than one by the end of the decade. I think zero people will generate electricity. by twenty thirty. I think there's a chance some number of people will generate some electricity in the twenty thirties, but I think it's gonna take a while to get reliable fusion power plants. So the science is very complicated and very hard. We're like getting really close on the science.

The engineering is also very hard and very complicated and there's a lot of work to do on the engineering side.

So what is genuinely new here then? So you're saying that the science maybe is what's leading this investment, right? We're going cumulative global private investment in fusion companies from ten billion in September twenty twenty five to fifteen billion by the end of the year. Seems like a lot. Yeah, there are a whole collection of things that are new. So some of it is the science, right? Improved computation, data collection. I mean the amount of

Processing we can do to really drive the plasma physics has changed radically, right? And we've had things like partnerships with Google Deep Mind and Fusion startups. You know, there's a lot of that kind of applying AI and better computational tools.

At the same time there's also been material science breakthroughs. So one of the key ones is in superconducting tape. So for some of these you need what are called superconducting magnets. They need to operate at very low temperatures so that there's no resistance in the material itself so you can have very m high magnetic fields. We've had material science breakthroughs that have allowed those magnets to be cheaper, easier to manufacture, more available. So there's, you know, it turns out

There's rarely one magical thing. It's a whole bunch of things that evolve and now, you know, that makes a lot of these problems easier to tackle. Wow. It's really the unsexy companies, right? Who's the who's the company making this tape? They're probably doing pretty good.

Yeah, yeah. No, there are so there are several of them. Um, but Commonwealth Fusion Systems is uh making their own tape and that has been a big enabling piece for them. And then there are other, you know, applications as well. that get enabled by this. So it's not just for fusion. It can also be used for transmission and all kinds of other stuff.

So this actually brings up something that I noticed when I was at Fusion Fest this week was that there seems to be this split between fusion companies about whether they should chase near-term revenue or not. So some are laser focused on power plants and don't want to do anything else in the near term. And others are saying, Hold off, we have something here that we can sell or some other side business that we can get into that'll give us additional revenue that will stretch our timeline.

I mean it's also a thing that happens in other startups. It's more acute in fusion. And some of it is a philosophical question and some of it is a pragmatic question. So philosophically, my view is do the thing you're doing. If you're planning on making money with all these like spin off technologies or whatever, like that's kind of a weird investment thesis. Also

Many people, including myself, think you can have a meaningful exit and pass the company on to the sort of next stage of investors without revenue because people love fusion so much. So we think you can get an exit on scientific accomplishment. However, the

For some of these fusion machines, they really go in cycles where you build the machine and then you do experiments and then you upgrade the machine and you do experiments. And so the people who are building the machine are often not the same who are doing the experiments and you don't wanna

lay off and rehire those people in cycles. And so sometimes for companies like this w where there's such a small specialized talent pool It does make sense to have a another thing to work on just so those people have something to to do, basically. And as long as it's not too far away from what they normally do, right? Right. And it's really about are you distracting progress of like is this other focus slowing the business down or not?

Yeah, that's a good point. I think I think we see that like across the startup, you know, landscape, right? Especially ones that are really focused on research. Like they often need some kind of a a side hustle that'll keep the lights on, um, so they're not just too reliant on VC. And I can imagine for like fusion which is along horizon.

you really need that because you're not you can access potentially non dilutive capital, but, you know, from government that's as you said, wishy washy. And a lot of VCs don't always want to put money into something that doesn't have a a return on investment within their fund. And that's something you've

talked a little bit about, right? So I think we have a a quote here from a pitchbook piece in February titled The Fusion Bulls Are Defying VC Conventions. You said quote, I think for everyone it's not a bet on revenue, it's a bet on fusion euphoria. It's not like we're underwriting somebody delivering a power plant during our fund lifetime. So if if it's not a traditional VC underwrite, what is the actual return thesis?

It is basically that scientific accomplishment is what causes the value inflection point. So what you're looking for is when does a company hit a meaningful value inflection point such that they can start accessing high-value secondary markets? Or they can go public. And because people love fusion in a way that I I personally think is a little bit irrational.

Scientific accomplishment is a big deal. And so if you hit, if you're one of the first couple of companies to hit Q greater than one, that is such a huge value driver that that company might be able to go public. Or if they turn on a successful prototype machine that hits, you know, Q equals five. maybe they can go public or at the very least they can have a really big up round and have secondaries so that the earlier investors can get their money out of multiple

So it's really not a traditional view. The value creation is science at this point and that can be a recognized return. This seems kind of similar to maybe some other industries. I don't know. Biotechs brings to mind for me where you've got these companies that are doing a lot of heavy research and maybe they've got some partnerships with companies to license some of their technology. It's bringing in some revenue, but not going public revenue in other that you would see in other sectors, right?

Is that the right analogy where you've got this upfront risk and then you go public and use that money to kind of finish things off?

Yeah. I would say it's similar. Bio biotech is maybe different in that it's sort of how that all works is agreed upon. It's very structured and the entire industry gets it. That's that's less true in energy, but there is some effort in fusion to at least rally around some common definitions so that there's

easier adjudication on when did people actually meet these milestones. And so that's some of the so i i I would say it is a good analogy where it it's just too much money to get all the way at the beginning. So you have to find ways to access capital that makes sense. Has everyone agreed on when that is? Like you mentioned two greater than one, right? Hitting that scientific milestone.

I've heard other people say maybe it's gotta be to the point where you're making enough energy to power the facility, not necessarily enough to put on the grid, but that you've hit a more commercial definition of break even. There's there's no agreement. I've been operating on the premise of Q greater than one. Can you define that? Yeah. So basically at its core, fusion you're taking two light elements

And you're fusing them together into one larger element. And so usually we're taking deuterium, which is hydrogen with an extra neutron, and tritium, which is hydrogen with two extra neutrons. and we are mashing those together and in that process you get a bunch of so it takes a lot of energy to get those atoms to come together because they really don't want to. But once you do, they merge and a bunch of new energy comes out.

in addition to some neutrons that are a problem that cause a lot of damage. And so the question is, is the energy that it takes to make that fusion happen consistently in like more than just one reaction, but across the the pool of the system?

less than the energy that you get out, right? The whole idea is that if you're not getting more energy out of it, you can't make a power plant. And so that when it's balanced, that's called Q equals one. So Q greater than one means we're getting more energy out. Is it like but a little bit more or like how much more? It's with the ratio. So the bigger the Q value, the bigger that ratio. And so Like what's like an ideal Q value to read?

Yeah. So there's a little bit of debate and that's part of s figuring out exactly the details of the power plant design. Some people think you could build a power plant on as low as Q equals ten. But of course, the higher the multiple, the easier it is to build an economic power plant, right? So the less energy you have to put in to get energy out. But Q equals ten is around what many people use as a cutoff.

Got it. Okay. And then before we move on entirely from the return thesis, just wanted to double click. So So it's not a traditional return thesis, but would you say is it fair to say that the thesis is about like getting to a point where the exit is an acquisition by like a utility or a strategic or a tech company?

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Thank you. Все. No, I mean there are some people that are betting on acquisition as the pathway, but sometimes it's like an earlier stage fusion company getting acquired by a later stage fusion company. It's quite unlikely that there would be a utility acquisition. I think it really is public markets or stay private large secondary. And so that model is more like what SpaceX has been doing for all this time, right?

SpaceX has been private for a long time, but there's been liquidity because of an active secondary market. And so I th those are the two main like there is an acquisition, but you're not as likely to have as big of an outcome with an acquisition pathway.

I'm glad you brought up SpaceX, Rachel. Um, because I think one of the things that people were talking about at this event was does fusion need a personality, almost like I hate to say like a carnival barker, right? Somebody to like drum up interest and excitement to get that story going because we are at least ten years away from something generating a meaningful profit.

to kind of carry us through that, right? Space is similar in this way. It takes a lot of rockets before you start making money. Yeah, I mean I think we've seen in a number of sectors having that big public personality is very helpful. I would say maybe even before we achieve that. Making sure there aren't People who are not not as like honest of brokers that are like detracting from the industry, I think to some extent like first do no harm. Right. Um so when it's a very competitive space.

sometimes people overstate accomplishments or are misleading. And so I think the community trying to work very hard to prevent that. is an important first step. And then, you know, ha having a strong public person would be icing on the case. Yeah, I don't know anyone whose overstated accomplishments, Rachel. I wonder who you're talking about. Uh anyway. Um, you know

I think that fusion is already kind of getting attention from some of these bigger personalities, right? Like Helian, I believe is backed by Sam Altman, Reid Hoffman, Dustin Moskowitz. Pacific Fusion, has stripes Patrick Collison, Citadels, Ken Griffin and uh Eric Schmidt. What are your thoughts on these tech billionaires funding Fusion versus traditional VC? Do they are they patient enough for the timeline? Do they have different expectations?

Yeah, my view for fusion and and some other sectors with some similar characteristics is actually that billionaires, strategics, sovereign wealth funds, those actually are a very good fit of capital because those group You know, strategics and sovereign wealths have other goals that aren't just a specific return profile over a specific timeline. And billionaires they get to choose you know, they get to choose whatever they feel like.

So a great way uh to use their money is to fill in the gaps where the government probably should be doing the work. So uh I actually think those forms of capital are a very good fit. Okay. So what does it tell you? Like what does the cap table of a fusion company tell you about its strategy? To be honest, any fusion company that says they have a different strategy is probably wrong.

Right. Like there's only really so there are only so many ways you can do this and it's kinda like two or three. And if you think you have a different plan, you probably don't. Right. Yeah. Well, I mean, let's talk about some of the companies you've invested in, right? So your portfolio includes uh radiant nuclear, I think that's portable micro reactor, there's Fervo Energy there in geothermal. We've got mainstream energy, modular reactors, and equilibrium energy.

So you're thinking about the whole stack. It's not about do I fund a fusion company? It's like what gets built around them, regardless of which reactor wins. Is that a fair assessment? Yeah. I think that's right. And we we do have a s we have a small position in Zap. I mean for us. We need energy now, we need it tomorrow, we need it in ten years, we need it in twenty years, right? Like guess what? We need energy, we're gonna keep needing energy. There's this weird, like small pie view about

electricity specifically, I mean energy in general, but people always like to focus on electricity for some reason. That is somehow like If this thing gets built, my thing won't get built. It's like we need so much energy. Like we can build all of these things. And we probably should build all of these things. And we want all of them to succeed. I I think in any future but like let's take, you know, national security or geopolitical stability or

I'm gonna say the word you're not allowed to say anymore. Climate change, right? Like or even just clean air. All of these things. We can say climate change. It's it's uh it's about eighty degrees here in New York City in April. We're we're talking climate change here. Um but right, there's so many reasons to care about clean energy of all different kinds and we need so much of it. And there it is just this like weird small pie mentality and sometimes

That comes from a view that there's only so much capital. But I think one of the things we can see right now is actually when an area becomes interesting, more capital comes. The capital pie can get bigger too. Good point. Along those lines, yeah,'cause you know, a lot of money's flowing into energy right now because everybody's worried about powering their data centers, but that's not really the whole picture, is it?

It's not. I mean data centers are very in the news and it it is a big fast change and so that gets a lot of attention. There's a lot of uncertainty around how much power we'll need by when and how many data centers we'll build. But right next to that, the narratives that have been going and to some extent accelerating, one is electrification. I think people have thought more about that of, you know, even though

They're a little bit out, maybe they're coming back in due to the war in Iran. Uh EVs, but there's also people electrifying homes, heat pumps, you know, d electric stoves. Like there is still that electrification current happening. And then maybe the bigger thing that people don't talk about as much is actually reindustrialization, that we are building more factories, we are building more industrial capacity here in the United States.

And those things are pretty modern. They take a lot of electricity. And if we are going to reindustrialize when there are a lot of reasons to do that. It needs we need a lot of energy. Yeah, that's a good point in terms of reindustrial'cause you know, before you said that, my question was going to be, are you focused mainly on America or are you focused on other countries as well? I mean, you know, we're feeling the the the pain at the pump.

but probably not nearly as much as other countries. Um, I've lived in New Zealand before. I you don't even wanna know how much it costs to fill up gas there right now. Yeah, that's right. And so that electrification narrative is even stronger in a number of other places and that reindustrialization focus is happening almost everywhere.

domestic manufacturing. And some of that started during COVID when we realized our supply chains were very fragile and were breaking down. Some of that has been geopolitically driven, right? There are a lot of reasons that people are looking to reindustrialize. And that is happening in a lot of places. So it's it's not just a US narrative. We're we're like slow on the E V side, but uh other than that it's pretty similar everywhere.

I I don't necessarily wanna take us back to the investment thesis thing, but I I think this kind of may maybe brings up a good point here is that

There are a lot of different ways to electrify, right? If you're gonna need so much energy, there's, you know, we listed a bunch of different, very different companies that you're invested in that are all generating power. And I think one of the challenges that energy startups face is that energy's pretty much just energy for the most part to the end user. They don't care really. Sometimes they do a little bit, but electrons are electrons.

And as long as they get'em, they're happy. So how does a startup position themselves Other than cost. I mean cost at the beginning and end of the day is the most important one. Um, but in addition to cost. There are things like what is the quality of the power? What are the characteristics of the power? Is it dispatchable? Is it clean? Is it a spinning load that helps with grid stability? Or is it

Can it be paired with power electronics that can help with grid stability? Like if we're looking at battery technology, even features like Are the charge and discharge rate coupled or decoupled so that you can actually work on the grid more flexibly? So there are a lot of other auxiliary things that help with electricity use and management that are valued characteristics.

Some markets value those characteristics and some don't. There's a whole big other discussion about like what reforms we need to consider for some of these things that actually do make the grid work. uh more efficiently and us uh able to better optimize the use of our assets, right? But um, you know, cost is still a major, major driver. Yeah, definitely. And, you know, not to um harp on too much about data centers, but you know

The regulatory framework is being written and I think a lot of that is with data centers in mind, right? So the DOE released its roadmap in October, targeting commercial fusion on the grid by mid twenty thirties. I think we're all now maybe learned that that's probably unreasonable to imagine in terms of timelines. But

You know, data centers do need always on dense power that solar and wind can't possibly provide. This is where the fusion value proposition is. So the regulatory roadmap is real, it's being written now, and I guess for our listeners, the window to shape it is is open. Any um any closing thoughts from you, Rachel, before we wrap up? I think maybe the one thing is just closing on this thought on data centers that

They have provided a very visible and unique opportunity that have people paying attention to electricity in particular in a way that they haven't before. And that is causing some fresh looks. And it to your point, it is an opportunity right now to go get through some policies that can be meaningfully helpful in all of the futures. And data centers have a

a cost tolerance to help accelerate the deployment of some of these advanced technologies that maybe would have had a slower road if they didn't have a customer who's ready to write a contract right now. So there are some real benefits on clarity of focus and and willingness to pay to actually accelerate things that are good in any future.

Okay, excellent. Well hey, thank you so much for joining us today. I feel like I've learned so much about fusion. Where can our listeners connect with you online? LinkedIn is the best thing. We have a DCVCS website. Come check out our companies. That was really interesting. I thought I would be more lost and confused than I was talking about fusion, but.

I re I'm really glad you were here, Tim, to to help wrap that one up. Um one thing I really appreciate about Rachel is that she provided that kind of reality check that is so refreshing that we just don't get in like the AI world, for example, right?

Which is very much like scale, scale, scale, gross, growth, gross. We're gonna solve humanity's hardest problems even as we're causing a a whole other swath of problems, right? So yeah, what did you think about her reality check in terms of no, we're not we're not making it at twenty thirty. I I thought it was very realistic. Um, you know, people have been working on fusion for decades, right? We first had these ideas.

you know, over seventy years ago that we could do this. And of course we did it just in an uncontrolled fashion in the form of thermonuclear bombs. But in terms of like harnessing that and getting it into a power plant, that's something that's been, yeah, it's been a long time coming and it's still there is still a ways to go. Like They've made tremendous progress in the last few years, but realistically what she said kind of echoes what I've been hearing from a lot of people.

is that, yeah, we might get some of these things turned on in the next few years. We might hit that, you know, magical Q greater than one moment where the reaction itself makes more energy than it takes to ignite. But getting those larger Q numbers to the point where you get to that Q equals ten or greater than ten, that's gonna be a while. There's still some really big challenges to overcome.

that are not necessarily just related to the plasma and the physics itself, but there's material science and all sorts of other things involved in making sure that we can do fusion in a way that makes sense commercially.

I'm not sure if you're able to define this really quickly, but fusion fission, different? Yes, big difference. So they're both considered nuclear power, but fusion, which we were talking about, is taking two elements and merging them together into a heavier element, which throws off energy and neutrons in the process. Fission is the opposite where you take one large atom, uranium most often, and you split it into two. And that act that process of splitting it into two also throws off

uh radiation and energy, which we then capture and turn into electricity. We've been doing that for That's the bomb. It's like the nuclear bomb. You split split the atom. you can do both. So you can have one where you split the atom and one where you merge the atom. In uncontrolled scenarios, those are bombs. In controlled scenarios, they are power plants.

Cool. Okay. Now, one thing that we didn't touch on enough with Rachel that I thought was interesting was the IPO route, right? And I know you published uh recently, and we'll have it in the show notes, you know, your wrap up from London. And included in that is some some notes about companies that are gonna IPO soon. Yeah, well not exactly IPO, but go public. Um It's different. Yeah, that's exactly spec. So

One of them is uh General Fusion and they are merging with a special purpose acquisition company. And that's not completed yet, but when it does go through, it will give General Fusion a much needed infusion of cash. uh to keep working on their machine, which they've had some fairly successful tests on. Um, but then they hit that point where like many fusion companies, it's just this is very expensive and they started running out of money.

Last year they put out a plea for additional investment and they got a bit of a lifeline. Uh and then this

merger came about and that looks like it's gonna give them at least several more years of runway. The other company is TAE, which Rachel mentioned. Um and TAE is merging with Trump Media and Technology Group, uh, and the combined entity is kind of a weird mishmash of two different sides, but out of that, TAE has already gotten two hundred million dollars and stands to get another hundred million dollars, again, giving them a pretty decent lifeline to continue pursuing their project.

Wow, t they're merging with Trump media and tech a a fusion company is And this is one that's been around since the seventies. I think they found it in nineteen ninety seven. Uh I think they took their first venture investment in the early two thousands. So I'm sure these investors have been waiting to cash out for well, literally decades. Um And uh it I was surprised too. I literally thought it was a joke when I first saw it in the morning. I had to double check.

Yeah. Oftentimes. That was uh yeah. I'm glad uh I'm looking forward to learning more about that one. Uh thanks again for for joining Tim. This was uh this was really fun. Yeah, thanks for back Where can our listeners uh find you online? Yeah, of course you can find me on TechCrunch, and then I'm also on LinkedIn, Blue Sky, and X.

Awesome. And I am on those platforms as well. You can find me there, uh dear listener. And you can also find equity at Equity Pod on X and Blue Sky. Talk to you next time. Equity is hosted by TechCrunch Senior Reporters and produced by Teresa Locon Solo with editing by Cal. Subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts and find out what's next at TechCrunch.com/slash events. Thanks so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.