Quick thoughts on the Trump Media & Technology Group and TAE Technologies, Inc merger news today:

  1. It's not the strangest fusion partnership to date. For that I'd award the founder of Penthouse funding the development of the Riggatron fusion machine (which was named after a bank) in the 1980's.
  2. It's obvious the markets are hot for AI and anything that looks like it can power it. Even the supersonic aviation aspiring Boom Supersonic has pivoted part of its business to support energy production.
  3. After a few quiet years, IPOs and SPACs are back. Even General Fusion is rumored to be going public soon.
  4. Scaling fusion is hard, with most private company's net-energy concepts likely costing high $100M's to >$1B to design, build, and operate.
  5. Raising that kind of money in the private markets might be even harder. Only Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Pacific Fusion, and Helion have been able to raise the massive rounds needed to build at fusion-scale. TAE Technologies, Inc has raised over $1B in total, but has done it over the course of 25+ years.
  6. After decades of promising that their commercial fusion machine is just around the corner, companies like TAE and General Fusion are likely getting a lot of pressure from their investors to exit.
  7. All this combined means that going into the public markets is probably the best opportunity for some fusion companies to satisfy the liquidity desires of their long term investors and to get the cash the company needs to build its next step device.
  8. I urge a healthy dose of skepticism towards anyone promising that fusion (and fission energy for that matter) is the near-term solution to our AI/data center power appetites. While they hopefully will turn out to be great options in the long run, it takes years of work to design, build, and operate prototypes and first-of-a-kind plants in the nuclear energy industry. And then many more years to scale up the industry to the level needed to make a wide-scale impact.
  9. To me, that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to scale these energy sources; it means that we try to figure out how to do it better, including forming partnerships to accelerate where we can. Only time will tell how well this new partnership works out. I've got my "bucket of popcorn" out to enjoy while watching this unfold. 🍿