Sam Altman, the CEO of ChatGPT developer OpenAI, who was thrust into the tech spotlight late last year, placed a $375 million bet in 2021 to propel another new technology.
The company Altman bet on is called Helion Energy and is focused on developing nuclear fusion, with the aim of building fusion reactors to deliver limitless energy.
Fusion has been a goal of other prominent tech billionaires, including Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, Bill Gates, and Marc Benioff, according to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
“It’s the holy grail. It’s the mythical unicorn,” Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, said, per the WSJ.
Benioff has his own fusion project, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which counts Gates as an investor.
Fusion, the process that powers the sun and the stars, occurs when two light atoms fuse to make a heavier atom. The mass of the new atom is less than that of the two that formed it, and the “missing” mass is given off as energy, according to Live Science.
The process releases massive amounts of energy, no carbon emissions, and limited radioactivity. However, companies would still need to find a way to sustain fusion reactions, according to the WSJ.
Benioff told the WSJ that fusion “has no limits if you can get it to work.”
In August 2021, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California came close to garnering more energy in a fusion reaction than was put in, known as “net gain.”
In December, the federally funded lab achieved a net gain, an unprecedented feat, and a historic breakthrough, according to the Department of Energy.
“This is what it looks like for America to lead, and we’re just getting started,” said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm reported CNN.
The breakthrough has created a new wave of optimism that fusion can be harnessed to create virtually unlimited energy sooner than many have expected.
“There’s a reasonable probability at least one, maybe two companies will demonstrate fusion conditions in this decade,” Ernest Moniz, former U.S. Energy Secretary, told the WSJ.
Helion said it looks to prove it can produce a net gain next year, per the WSJ.
The company’s employees are using Altman’s ChatGPT to see if AI can accelerate the engineering work, Helion CEO David Kirtley said, according to the WSJ.
Fusion-focused startups are the next hot thing in venture capital, with fusion projects raising $5 billion, 75% of that coming since 2021, according to PitchBook, per the WSJ.
While many of the world’s most prominent investors are on board with finding a sustainable renewable energy source through fusion, the future development of companies in search of the next fusion breakthrough will undoubtedly prove difficult.
“A lot of these are not businesses–they are tech developers,” said Barbara Burger, former president of Chevron Technology Ventures, told the WSJ.
“Until you have revenue, you don’t have a business.”
