David Kirtley, Founder & CEO of Helion Energy

Carolyn. Today we are here with David Curtley, the founder and CEO of Helon Energy, making fusion power plants.

>> Amazing.

>> Welcome, David.

>> Welcome, David.

>> Thank you for having me.

>> I'm actually really excited because originally I reached out to have you participate in one of our founder mode episodes at the the YC retreat this

summer. And unfortunately, you you

summer. And unfortunately, you you couldn't do that. So I said, "Well, then why why don't you come on a full episode later on so we get to talk to you for the full story?"

>> Let's do it. Let's talk about how to build a fusion business.

>> Let's do it.

>> Fusion. Okay. Just for our audience and me, of course. Um can you explain fusion? You know, fusion 101.

fusion? You know, fusion 101.

>> Yeah. So fusion is the process that happens in stars where lightweight isotopes so literally hydrogen and helium the most abundant elements in the

universe under intense pressure and heat and temperature fuse together joining forming heavier elements. It's actually

the process how all matter is created in the universe and we don't really harness it here routinely on earth to make energy and or electricity yet. And so

that's what Helion aims to do is build generators that take those same processes that happen in stars and and do it here on Earth to make lowcost safe

base load electricity.

>> So we're essentially looking at unlimited clean electricity sometime soon.

>> That's the goal. Probably not free though. Uh we do have a business to run,

though. Uh we do have a business to run, but that's the goal. That's what

motivates the team at Helon is that you know every day we do fusion. We take

hydrogens and heliums and then under really intense pressures and temperatures we fuse them together make electricity. I think um what the models

electricity. I think um what the models show is that you can do fusion such that you can provide electricity lower cost than any other cost of electricity

because the fuel is common in all water on earth. And if you can build the

on earth. And if you can build the machines effectively and efficiently and low cost then the fusion itself the power that you can produce is also really low cost.

>> Can I ask a dumb physics question just just to does the does the act of fusing the molecules together is that what releases the energy? So first in in physics no question is a dumb question like

>> okay >> like [laughter] what what we are doing is harnessing the fundamental forces of the universe and so understanding that and understanding the details of how that works is really

critical for all of us daytoday and yes so what happens is that in the the depths of the atoms you take two hydrogen atoms in fact we use a specific

one called dutyium which is a heavy hydrogen A hydrogen is made up of a proton and an electron and and hydray hydrogen. Dutium has an extra neutron

hydrogen. Dutium has an extra neutron and a heavier particle. And then we take a helium 3 um which is another isotope that has two protons and a neutron. And

when you fuse those together, you make helium 4, but that helium 4 and the proton it makes are actually lighter

than the parts you started with. And

this comes back to the old E= MC² actually which is pretty fabulous is that that change we call that the mass deficit is the energy released.

>> Okay. Okay.

All right. That's good. Thank you for going back. I just need the stage.

going back. I just need the stage.

>> We got end of the weed there. Yeah.

>> So fundamentally what this means for us on a dayto-day is we put in this dutyium this helium 3 fuel and what we get out of it is helium 4 which by the way is

balloon helium. It's the normal helium

balloon helium. It's the normal helium we use in everyday life and extra hydrogen. And those particles come out

hydrogen. And those particles come out hot. They come out with a lot more

hot. They come out with a lot more energy and electricity than you put into them. And so now you can take it's

them. And so now you can take it's actually like a million times more energy comes out than you put in to the individual reactions. And so you can

individual reactions. And so you can harness that and make a tremendous amount of output electricity.

>> Oh my god, this is like world changing.

Um, which is pretty exciting to be talking to you.

>> I didn't say the hard part though. The

hard part [laughter] that's that's the easy part. The hard

part is that um to get to the conditions where the fusion happens takes a 100 million degrees and it takes a thousand

atmospheres. So so hotter temperature

atmospheres. So so hotter temperature than the sun and higher pressure than than almost everywhere on Earth until you go to actually it's the same pressure as the Mariana's Trench, the lowest part of the ocean.

>> And so you have to get to those pressures and the temperature of the sun all in one place. And that's what's hard. That's what's taken physicists and

hard. That's what's taken physicists and engineers so long to be able to do this.

And it wasn't until our last generation system 3 years ago that we were able to build a machine that did that uh with our technology.

>> Well, we did this in the 70s, didn't we, in nuclear power plants or or what are you doing something different than like those old '7s nuclear power plants?

>> Yeah. So, you're thinking about nuclear fision and so this is the exact separating >> this is the exact exactly right. exact

opposite where you're taking uranium, plutonium, heavy elements and cracking them in half and releasing the particles that are trapped inside.

>> Okay.

>> But part of of fishision is that there are these radioactive sort of byproducts right David?

>> Yeah. The the the parts that are left behind, we call those the actonides, but the parts that are left behind are are the the the um are the big radioactive

byproducts in in nuclear fision. And there's some other complications around potential meltdowns and and energy release and all those things that just doesn't happen in

fusion. Um it's it's a fundamentally

fusion. Um it's it's a fundamentally different process.

>> Okay. I'm going to ask you to say one sentence again because it struck me. The

thing about hotter than like the sun and also deeper than the deepest part of the ocean. Say that sentence again.

ocean. Say that sentence again.

that to get fusion to happen here on Earth, you have to heat the fuel to hotter than the the the temperature of the sun. In fact, 10 times the surface

the sun. In fact, 10 times the surface of the temperature of the sun and at the same time have it to be very high pressure. In our systems, it has to be

pressure. In our systems, it has to be higher pressure than the deepest part of the ocean on Earth. So, deeper than the Mariana's Trench.

>> Okay, that's going to scare away almost every single startup founder I've ever met. So, I want to talk to you about how

met. So, I want to talk to you about how you I want to back up and talk to you about how you got into this because what uh what a big thing to be attacking.

Yeah. What a challenging thing to be attacking that no one succeeded in doing for years and years and years. So, can

we back up and tell us how you first started getting into this?

>> Yeah. So I um was probably unique and and and this isn't that unique. I think

that as uh a teenager I said I want to do something that changes the world. Um

and uh and I think I think everyone starts there. Um and and then starts to

starts there. Um and and then starts to look at the world with their lens of what are the problems I want to go solve in the world. And for me where I was at the time is I saw a lot of challenges

with energy. Um clean water and that

with energy. Um clean water and that comes down to energy. um for a lot of my childhood. My father was in the Navy and

childhood. My father was in the Navy and so we went from military base to military base all over the world and I got to see lots of parts of the world but also see that you know see the oil

tankers see I lived on a small island and see the desalination plants and see some of the other challenges we had and

went to I want to go solve energy and you know it always struck me as a a child of an engineer and a and a scientist that Most of the energy in the

universe, in fact, matter too, is created from this process, this fusion process that happens in stars that we just don't do here. In fact, in some ways, it's a little it's a little bit,

it always felt silly to me that we use the after effects of fusion. We use the sunlight that you know a tiny fraction of the sunlight created that hits earth

and we convert that to electricity or that gets converted into plants and then into eventually you know millions of years later into oil and that's what we use and it's like why aren't we using

the actual process and so that's what I went off to study and I went and studied this for a number of years in my undergraduate academic education and in

early master's work and what I saw Paul was that the fusion that we were doing, the approaches for fusion um were

brilliant run by brilliant scientists and engineers um that were focused on approaches to fusion that would eventually get us to fusion here on

Earth. Like I absolutely believe that

Earth. Like I absolutely believe that and and I believe that you know the amount of work that those brilliant scientists engineers have done over the since the 1930s and 40s has progressed

the field of the physics and the engineering of fusion massively. But I

also saw that some of the business and commercial aspects were missing. that

what we were seeing was it was going to take, we already knew this at the time, tens of billions or hundreds of billions of investment to prove a prototype that

that those technologies would never have a return on investment. You couldn't see how that amount of investment and a given amount of decades to build those machines would ever

>> return lowcost electricity. So you're

not you're doing really great engineering and science, but you're not getting to the product. I also saw that and this is maybe a little selfish. I

like to build things and the physicists and engineers that I was working with, we would be designing something but probably never actually build it. It

would never see it turn on in our career. And I was like, that's that's

career. And I was like, that's that's not for me. Like I want to go build a thing that works and I want to see it. I

want to participate in it. Um so I went off I actually pivoted my career away from fusion and took the physics of high temperature gases uh we call it a plasma actually and electromagnetics and all

the things I learned and I pivoted into space propulsion and started running teams and designing technologies to do to take some of that physics and engineering from fusion and apply it to

rockets and in fact some of the the the thruster technologies are what are the thruster techn that we developed when I was working at the air force research labs is the technologies used in

Starlink right now to run those spacecraft that we developed and shared out into the world. And then

they took it and ran with it a million miles past where we were. But that told me, hey, we can actually take some of this same physics and engineering and modern technology and go way faster than

what others had thought. 2008, uh, I moved to Washington State to run a team to do this. And that team also took some of those technologies and we applied it

to fusion going backwards of hey why don't we try to develop systems that are much smaller than people have ever done before that are much more efficient they use fiber optics and high-speed

computing and high speed and um and modern power electronics that these other approaches that I learned in my co my academic programs didn't use and now

apply those modern technologies essentially Moore's law take Moore's law and apply it to fusion, what can we do?

And what we found is we could go way faster. And so in in the last 10 years

faster. And so in in the last 10 years now, we built seven prototypes that do fusion um where most folks are are a decade or 30 years between prototypes.

So that has enabled us to iterate quickly on the science, iterate quickly on the engineering and then and and then now build full scale systems. We're on our >> seventh generation system that's running

every day. Uh in a few

every day. Uh in a few >> Polaris, >> we'll be running Polaris and doing fusion. Wait, this is a good segue

fusion. Wait, this is a good segue actually. Um because I asked Sam this

actually. Um because I asked Sam this week. I said you were coming on the

week. I said you were coming on the show. So I asked Sam Alman because by

show. So I asked Sam Alman because by the way I always look at um when we're interviewing someone and I think Caroline does too. I look at the

application just to see what was there and you have a what I call a SAM special meaning just your names and the company

name was in it. So I said I think Sam like handrecruited Helion. Is that true?

>> Yeah, I I think it's I think it's pretty true that um when we met Sam, he and this is this is part of Sam's genius

is that he was thinking about the power problems of data centers 10 years ago >> and longer now. And you know, we were out there building systems that did

fusion and still in the traditional model, the academic model of write a paper, write a proposal, submit it for a grant, win a grant, build a thing, learn

a bunch of of of science and engineering about that thing, graduate a few students, and then and then rinse and repeat. But with a technology that was

repeat. But with a technology that was moving much faster than other people.

And so Sam actually came out and visited with a with a stack of textbooks and and we dug in for several days into the technology, the physics of Fusion um and

the business path and the and our iteration speed and and I think that that resonated a lot. And then um um he said now I I'm you should go to Y Combinator and because they're going to

teach you how to move fast and and build a business that can actually scale.

So, first I want to just read you what he said to me because I said, 'What do you remember about them? And he said how earnestly they built relative to any

other fusion company in the space. There

were no fancy power points or anything, just building, visiting their office. It

felt like the YC approach to fusion versus how traditional VCs used to do it and hire MB MBA MBAs for it. And I just I loved that description. And does that

does that resonate with you?

>> Yeah, I think it it does that we were focused on and I didn't know this at the time actually that this was the this is

how you build uh software that us software products that users want is that you just build and iterate quickly and then deploy something learn collect data on how well it's working and then

iterate again. And that's what we were

iterate again. And that's what we were doing. And our our goal was just to how

doing. And our our goal was just to how do we get fusion to the world as fast as possible by every means necessary. And

so when he visited I think we had one machine operating, we had one machine half complete and we had one machine and half disassembled

and we're just iterating on on all of those three in parallel.

>> Can I ask you just what what's the size of these machines? So when Sam visited, we were in a uh probably about a 5,000 square foot warehouse. Um the machine

itself was it was a meter in diameter and and and and about uh 10 m long. Um

so about on the order of 30 ft long. And

um and now now they're a bit bigger. So,

uh, we have, uh, all of Polaris is in a 27,000 square ft facility and it's about, um, 10 ft in diameter and about 40 ft long and a lot of power

electronics that fill the rest that fill the rest of the building.

>> I'm going to just get this over with cuz I I said to Paul, I think you you flew up and visited Helion once. He came up with our son, I think, to visit you guys

and I in Washington. And I said, what do you remember, Paul? And he said he remembered how terrifying and gigantic the machines looked quote palpably

advanced.

[laughter] >> So Carolyn, I think we need to go on our field trip. Needs to stop by Everett,

field trip. Needs to stop by Everett, Washington.

>> For sure.

>> For sure. Yep. And I don't think he got to see uh certainly Polaris was not was not fully constructed yet and and and not operating. So he was seeing some of

not operating. So he was seeing some of the previous systems. Okay. So, can you you you said quickly how you went to you moved to Washington with your team, but

can we back up just really quickly? Do

you remember what was going on when you first got started? Like, what were you focused on?

>> It's so funny. I think that um you you know, you look back on it and you can see the clear uh pathway of how you ended up where you were, but at the time

maybe it just felt messy. Our goal was to build power plants as fast as possible. And what we saw was that the

possible. And what we saw was that the things that we were doing essentially when Sam met us still we were thinking about we are going to do material science and plasma physics and

fusion electricity and space propulsion and went to Y cominator and spent time at Y cominator and it was clear that you got to focus you got to what is your

product and and what are you going to deploy in the world and so that's it and so we then narrowed down the vision of Helion to only that singular vision making generators in fact a very

specific size of generators that where it can fit in a shipping container and move quickly and build toward build that well actually that was another question I was going to ask you when Sam said

when he visited you and said now you need to do Y cominator I mean no offense to us but weren't you like dude we're building you know [laughter] power

plants here generators like what was your thought when he said that >> in All honesty, I was a little skeptical that we had been running a business for a while that, you know, collected lots

of money from government grants. We

built lots of hardware, you know, we had the basics of we had Quickbooks and we were doing the business parts and we had incorporated and we had done all of those parts and we had a deck. It's

interesting to hear Sam's version of our deck in 10 years later, but we had a a a version of a pitch deck and we thought we had that business and we were moving

faster than everybody else we knew. And

I I was wrong that that uh my uh co-founder and I Chris and I um spent the summer in the Bay Area at for Y Combinator and we would alternate

actually where we would spend he would spend time while I was working on pushing building the machines and then um and then I I would spend time and while he was up building the machines

and um and and our other third co-founder was was focused entirely on the hardware up in at that time in Redmond.

And and yeah, what we saw at Y Combinator was just so um a different mindset of focus of focus on what is the thing what how

do you build a product that users want and for us the user is everyone who buys power and what they want is lowcost clean base load and really safe

electricity and they wanted it yesterday and so let's go focus on that and and strip away any other side technology.

technology projects. So really laser focused on that one one product. Two,

focus on the business on really all the only the things that matter. Don't focus

on and maybe this is what Sam saw was the sort of the hints hints of this, but don't focus on the parts of the business um that aren't pushing the product forward. And so that meant things like

forward. And so that meant things like we're no longer going to graduate as much students. Like we're not going to

much students. Like we're not going to spend time training students anymore because that doesn't develop the actual technology as fast as focusing on just building. It means investing in the

building. It means investing in the manufacturing upfront and building the capacity so that when you discover a new engineering or a new science challenge at that time um you have the internal

capacity to go build it and iterate and and evolve it and then just just streamline and focus and every day ask yourself is this a thing that helps me deploy this product faster and if it's

not then don't do it or push it for later. That's interesting because focus

later. That's interesting because focus is a key thing that Y Combinator brings to the table that I think the world doesn't realize how important focus is

when you're building something whether it's a consumer app or fusion company >> and think about where you put your treasure um where are you putting your

resources that are you investing your expensive investment capital in the parts that accelerate the business or is it is Is it window dressing? Is it

extra? Or does it slow down the business because you're preparing, you're putting too much process in place? And so, so we think about that pretty constantly of does this accelerate the business? Does

it accelerate product development? Does

it accelerate the deployment? Does each

hire accelerate it? And really having that be the focus dayto day every every hour of of how you run the business.

>> Did you guys do demo day?

>> We did do demo day. It was uh a wild experience for me. So, as as a as a as a as a scientist, as an engineer who's given a ton of talks, I went in uh to

the the YC partners with like this is what I think my pitch deck should look like. And it had a lot of words like

like. And it had a lot of words like just >> of course.

>> Oh, I bet it did. Yes. [laughter]

>> And annotations. It had a reference page where you're gonna like [laughter] reference this. It was very very

reference this. It was very very excellent scientific presentation. if I

say so myself. But um and they were like, "No, you need a picture. One

picture. What's the vision? What are you actually developing?

>> Don't tell me about all the nuts and bolts about how you're going to do it.

You better understand that cuz cuz you're going to get questions on it, but but tell me what the vision is. Tell me

how the the audience tell me how the world is going to come along behind Fusion and Helion and and deploy this."

And so it was it was a it was a pretty wild wakeup call. Um, and the thing I I found that was really interesting was that you learn your own business better.

You learn your own product better because when you have all of that detail to focus on, you are distracted. You are

not focused. You are not accelerated.

And you have a honestly a bunch of crutches that you could you could rely on rather than focusing on like what do we actually care about? We care about deploying power uh 1 cent a kilowatt

hour lower cost than anything else on the planet. And how do we get there and

the planet. And how do we get there and what are the things to get us there?

That was >> what was the by the way?

>> Yeah. What was the picture?

>> Literal picture.

>> Yeah. Uh it was >> Caroline, we would have been there. We

were actually sounds kind of familiar.

>> Yeah. So we had we had a couple of pictures because I wasn't able to down select but we had but so so still still working on it but a fundamental picture of the the fusion itself and this is

something that differentiates helion is we do fusion dayto day we do it and so when you do fusion it's actually like a bright fuchsia branding of helon you see

this bright fusion glow this bright fuchsia background and so it's like fusion is real it's here we do it this isn't science fiction anymore this is a thing we Um, so that was one of an actual

operating fusion machine. Um, the other was what do you think the world looks like? Let's talk about the environment.

like? Let's talk about the environment.

Let's talk about the impact of large scale clean electricity. And so there was some version of like clean water um and and the environment. And so focusing on on on those things and then being

able to talk to the details of how do you get to that one kettle? What are the tech technology paths you need to develop? What are the proof points to be

develop? What are the proof points to be able to do that and get there?

>> And did you raise a lot of money? I was

just going to say, how did investors, >> right?

>> We got a lot of interest, a lot of interest um and a lot of and and and a lot of offers at the time. Um in the end what we found was that um and this gets

back to that focus part is that what we have done at Helon is be very careful around how big the cap table is and how

many people are are are invested in Helion. And so we didn't actually end up

Helion. And so we didn't actually end up uh taking offers that day or during demo day um and and clo closing any closing

around then. Um, and so it wasn't until

around then. Um, and so it wasn't until nine months later when we had worked with a number of those investors and then a a bigger pool also and done diligence with them, make sure they

really understand the technology, gotten them comfortable with the technology, but also getting us comfortable that they're comfortable with the technology because this is a bit different than what what what maybe people had seen at

demo day before. And so it was really important to us to one have have a smaller pool of folks because we knew we were we would go on to uh we raised a

billion dollars now multiple rounds as we buil build multiple prototypes and and deployable fusion systems um and then also make sure that everybody's on the same page about the timelines and um

the amount of hardware and capital we're gonna have to to build and deploy. I'm

sitting here with my mouth open a little bit because this is such a power move, David, to like sort of like, you know, spend time really get to know the investors and and sort of did you weed

people out in the process saying, "Oh, they're just going to sort of be impatient or cause problems or did did it re did you really get to know them?"

>> Yes. Yep. and and that and that the the round that we end ended up building was of only a handful of larger investors

but also ones that were were spending the qualification for me at the time and it's a good question of whether we we would make that decision now. So, this

is maybe a little bit of hindsight. Um,

was that they were going to spend the time to either learn some of the engineering and physics or hire somebody that's going to learn the engineering and physics and do technical diligence.

>> Interesting.

>> Yeah. And for me, the the thought process there, I've never talked about this for what it's worth. This is super this is a really great question was that

I knew that um we had a lot of big problems to solve and that um it was going to take iterations of both technology and machines as well as we're

here in Everett building uh we went from 5,000 ft to 500,000 square feet now of manufacturing and so and that was going to take some real development and

timeline and patience. Yeah, patience

being the operative word here.

Interesting. Who were can I ask who those investors were in that first sort of post demo day round? Was Sam in it or he had invested earlier?

>> So, so at that time Sam was not. So, Y

Cominator was uh so uh our first round was led by Nithil Capital.

>> Um and then and then we had >> Oh, that's Peter Teal. That's Peter

Teal, right? Okay. Okay.

>> And then we had Capricorn Investment Group and and Capricorn led our series B round and we haven't really talked about publicly the other folks that that were in that, but we had another half dozen

folks um that were at Demo Day that had invested.

>> Okay, moving on then. So, it sounds like your time with Y Combinator was well spent.

>> Oh, for me, um for the business, fabulously well spent.

>> Okay. And so we we have and we we even now are um continue to as we bring in executives and leaders at Helion, how do we this comes back to founder mode too,

which is why I'm sorry I missed you because I think that would have been a really fabulous time together. Um

>> tell us quickly about your founder mode thing.

>> We still as new executives and leaders come on. um one focusing on on hiring to

come on. um one focusing on on hiring to make sure I'm in and Chris and I are in the hiring process because we're looking to continue to grow that at at the

company. I think it's absolutely um

company. I think it's absolutely um critical that keeping that founder mode mindset, focusing on what matters, just absolutely um driving to that as hard as

you can, taking no excuses for why things should be slower or we can't do a do that or solve that problem. Um, and

then getting in the weeds. Um, as

annoying as it is sometimes to, um, the teams, Chris and I, George, the other founders, we are in the weeds. When

there's a problem to be solved, we're going to go and and and help solve that problem and not just hope it gets done.

And so, and we I want that all my leaders to be that way.

>> So, you did YC in in summer 14. You

know, you started a little bit before that. You've been doing this for a

that. You've been doing this for a while. Did you have to train yourself on

while. Did you have to train yourself on how to become a leader and a manage manager as your company grew?

>> Definitely I have had to grow like that is that is absolutely for sure. Um and

but part of it I think has also been I've had different development periods in my personal growth where I actually strayed away from founder mode a little

bit and have come back and so so at the time that we joined Y cominator the founders at Helion we are we were a team we were less than 10 people then um and we're well over 500 people now um we

>> wow >> we were very much whether we knew the termin terminology at the time in that mindset of very hands-on ve all very

involved in the business. you know,

literally hands- on to the point of where we were turning wrenches and building machines, but also really paying attention to the details so that we could execute quickly and make the machines work and and do fusion and and

and so putting all those pieces together, we were really focused on that, but we hadn't really thought about the framework. any we're just sort of

the framework. any we're just sort of naturally doing it over the years of building helon scaling building now now multiple machines that then set

continual world records for fusion that is sometimes drifted it it it's easy to relax into more of a an a business mindset more of a traditional business

take your hands off the reins and say like I'm just going to let this part of the business do its thing and not really be really you know focused on it um and then and in some ways is we we've come

to regret that that there have been pieces where I look back and and I'm like whoa we've put bureaucracy in process we slowed down we didn't accelerate we slowed down why did we do

that and had to come back an adviser for many years who said David are you Eisenhower or Pat do you lead from behind the scenes orchestrating the

field and then letting your generals go off and and and and you know move move the the go forward or do you get in the trenches? Do you get in the tank, get in

trenches? Do you get in the tank, get in the trenches and then actually go and and lead on the front lines? And then

and they spent many years telling me that we should I should be Eisenhower. I

should be behind the scenes, set a best set of specifications, hand it off and let it just execute by itself and not not pay attention to it. It turns out that's not me. And it turns out that's

none of the founders at Helon [laughter] that um it's it's get to the front lines and get in there and solve the problems.

Um, and then train folks, motivate them, um, give them the resources they need, and then let them go continue the thing because there's something over here, another another battle to fight, another

fire to put out, another manufacturing line to build, another hiring pipeline to open, another fund raise to do to go and then and and jump onto that and put all your all your effort into that that

thing. Um, and solve that problem and

thing. Um, and solve that problem and then build the team to go do that. and

then they can go run and then and then go and build and build a business that way. And that turns out that one that

way. And that turns out that one that resonates with me as a human, but it also has been I have seen the most effective and I've been told it doesn't scale. People tell me that all the time

scale. People tell me that all the time and I don't think that's right. I think

that as long as what you're leaving behind when you go solve some part of the business is a part of the organization that is still operating in founder mode and going forward at

velocity at high speed and hopefully accelerating if you've if I've done a good job then you can go off and focus on something else for a while and then check in every once in a while see how

it's going. Do you ever get tempted um

it's going. Do you ever get tempted um to take this technology and work on something that's like easier and faster and lucrative because >> Mhm.

>> because it sounds like that's how kind of how you started until you really focused. And so I just wonder how much

focused. And so I just wonder how much like temptation is there maybe from yourself but also from outside investors or whatever to like do the easy thing.

>> There is constant external pressure to do that. A a spe a specific one is we

do that. A a spe a specific one is we use a fuel called helium 3, a rare isotope of helium um that is safe and

clean um but pretty rare. And we very early found in fact we didn't invent this. This is one of the earliest ideas

this. This is one of the earliest ideas in fusion is using this fuel which is most people in fusion don't use this.

They use a different fuel and and people don't use it because it's pretty rare and expensive. And so what we developed

and expensive. And so what we developed very early as a way to make it to actually make it here on Earth and we've shown we can make it. We have now have a whole process to filter it and isolate

it for ourselves. But we could go sell it. We could go sell it today.

it. We could go sell it today.

>> And it's, you know, totable total addressable market if you really squint at it is maybe several hundred million. Um, so it's it's a reasonable market and it's and

it's useful and would be good for humanity. in fact is used for medical

humanity. in fact is used for medical imaging as as as a as a product and it's not our goal. It's not the trillion dollar market.

>> It's not clean safe electricity for all of humanity. It is very niche. Um but we

of humanity. It is very niche. Um but we could do it today and and and get and and have customers that have come to us

asking for it and we say no. we say no because um one um it's not it doesn't solve the problem we want and I worry

that I've watched businesses get diverted by that early stage much smaller um easier to grab uh product and

then stop there and and we don't want to do that the other part is I also look at market dynamics is that you look at how markets like that change yes it's super lucrative now great you go solve that

problem. I drive costs lower and now

problem. I drive costs lower and now very quickly it's not as lucrative. And

and I think we've had the freedom uh this gets to something we were talking to earlier, but it gets we've had the freedom to say no because of some of the investors that we've picked >> because of the work.

>> Yeah. Yeah.

>> If they were interested in a three-year return or even a fiveyear return, then they would be pushing us very hard and I may not be able to say no.

>> Right. um by by really focusing folks that really are looking towards that global scale deployment of clean electricity as as the market um that

that has given me the space as a leader and as the CEO to be able to focus the team on that and and it's a monthly conversation at Helon. [laughter] I bet.

Helon. [laughter] I bet.

>> So you were saying that, you know, the idea of fusion was started back in the 30s. They were researching it and did

30s. They were researching it and did all this great work and over the years it's always been like, oh, fusion's 20 years away, 20 years away. What has

happened that now makes it not 20 years away. In fact, according to you, it's

away. In fact, according to you, it's three years away, right? With this

Microsoft deal, like what what has changed to make that happen?

Yeah, we broke ground on our power plant for Microsoft earlier this year and so we are absolutely pushing forward and

believe we can deploy electrons on the grid by 2028 and what's enabled that has been other technologies. There's been a tremendous amount of progress in fusion.

Our understanding of the physics of those 100 million degree gases today is not what it was 20 years ago and was is not what it was 20 years before. And so

there's been a tremendous amount of that work that's being has been done and I cannot never discount how great that has been and how great some of the government funding that supported that

the basic science has been. But in

parallel to that, Moore's law happened that the price of compute or the way we think about it is the amount of power that you can pack into a chip into

silicon has so radically changed in in the intervening dec literally decades of Moore's law >> that that has applied to us. Um I think

back to what the folks in the 1950s and60s did in fusion and I am like in awe of that work. because you had um

work with the computer didn't exist. So

this was like hand calculations of really tough physics things that we we we wouldn't even try to do by hand anymore. Um and they were able to build

anymore. Um and they were able to build machines that did fusion by we haven't talked about the mechanisms of fusion too much but large amounts of electricity. In fact, they are able to

electricity. In fact, they are able to take our current Polaris right now is running at over 100 gigawatts of peak electricity um into the machine and large amounts of electricity coming out

of the machine. And they were able to build systems before the transistor existed that could commute large amounts of current in very short periods of

time. And it's with vacuum tubes. It's

time. And it's with vacuum tubes. It's

absolutely amazing to me. Um, and in the intervening times, silicon has now evolved to where we can I'll give you hard numbers here. We need to be able to

to turn on electricity in uh we measure it in nanoseconds in 10 nanoseconds of time. We have to be able to and when I

time. We have to be able to and when I started my career that was very hard to do. 10 nanconds is less than a

do. 10 nanconds is less than a gigahertz. A gigahertz CPU is off the

gigahertz. A gigahertz CPU is off the shelf. You can get it anywhere now. Um,

shelf. You can get it anywhere now. Um,

but it used to be really hard. We have

the amount of data we have to collect for every pulse where we do fusion is measured in tens of gigabytes of data and and that hasn't changed. That has

always been the case. We've always

needed that amount of data. But again,

when I started my career, we talked in in kilobytes and megabytes and and and that's just not the case anymore. It's

we can we can actually handle that. And

so we're not talking about gigabytes anymore. We're talking about terabytes

anymore. We're talking about terabytes of data that we collect at Helon. And

that's that's things that we can do. Now

the other big one is fiber optics is that in these systems we have uh in Polaris for instance we have tens of thousands of of large scale uh semiconductors that are commuting that

are switching for the doing the electricity and each one is controlled by a fiber optic and a fiber optic has to respond again in nanoseconds of time scale. That used to be really really

scale. That used to be really really hard, but you can go buy a a 10 gigabit, so that's way less than a nancond fiber uh uh fiber networking card from Best Buy today.

[laughter] >> And and and it's it has just totally transformed our ability to to diagnose these systems, to understand what's happening inside of them, to control them, to run them. Uh because the

physics has never changed. The gas, this high-speed 100 million degree gas has always moved so fast that we needed one nancond or tens of nanconds of time scale and now we can do it. And also

high-speed computing just in itself. Um

we have a small programmable logic brain on every single all distributed all over the machine. Um we used to need big

the machine. Um we used to need big supercomputers to understand what was happening real time in these but we don't anymore. We just put a little

don't anymore. We just put a little programmable logic all over the machine and there's a large, you know, network bus uh that that runs the whole thing over Ethernet and that has now enabled

us to do what we we what was 20 years ago very very hard and expensive to do and 20 years before that was impossible to do.

>> Wow, that is so cool. Tell us about your latest machine.

>> Our seventh generation machine is called Polaris. Um, we name that after a star

Polaris. Um, we name that after a star that does helium fusion. Also happens to be the north star, the guiding star.

Polaris >> and Polaris lives in a building we call Ursa. Um, named after Ursa Minor, the

Ursa. Um, named after Ursa Minor, the little dipper. That's the constellation

little dipper. That's the constellation that Polaris lives in.

>> Um, that's how we name the plants and we name the generators themselves that go inside the plants. We um finished most of the mechanical construction last year

and were able to begin making plasmas in December of last year for Polaris. We

spent this year now hooking up more power uh to Polaris. Not just making these fusion plasmas I uh running at millions of degrees, but now

superheating them to tens of millions of degrees. Um and um and in Polaris uh we

degrees. Um and um and in Polaris uh we are now have it's fully complete and we've been running now at full power doing fusion for um for uh several

months now. And so now it's an

months now. And so now it's an optimization. It's tweaking. It's

optimization. It's tweaking. It's

getting the power up. It's getting the power out that we're focused on.

>> I have a question. It sounds like it takes a ton of energy to make energy.

This is sort of like that 50,000 foot but it the the goal here unless I've really misunderstood this whole conversation is that you make so much more in the output than you did in the

what is the ratio?

>> What most folks in fusion are trying to do is make fusion reactions that are have tremendous what we call yield energy out per energy in. What we're

trying to do is a little bit different.

Our goal is to be very very efficient with every all all the electricity we put into it. And so this is what we proved uh in 2014 during our Y cominator

time is that we could take electricity um from the wall, put it into fusion electromagnets, the parts that do the work, and then recover 96% of that electricity.

>> Oh, >> before you've done any fusion. So now

the fusion part only has to make up that last 4%. And a little bit extra to sell.

last 4%. And a little bit extra to sell.

Most folks in fusion lose most of the energy they put in and most of the energy they pull out. So they're in the efficiency of maybe, if I'm being generous, 10% efficiency. Most a lot of

folks are less than 1% efficiency. And

what that means is the fusion process has to make up all that loss. It has to be much more energetic. It has to be bigger, more complex, more expensive, take longer to build. And so by focusing

on efficiency of it of of what do we care about? What's the product? It's not

care about? What's the product? It's not

fusion, it's electricity. And so I better be saving every electron I put in, I should pull out and save as much as I can. And so therefore our goal is

now fusion uh for us we want to make on the order of one and a half to two times the electricity we put in as output.

Most people in fusion are what 30 times to 300 times the energy. And so that that's the goal for for what we do. And

in Polaris right now when we turned it on earlier this year we're already recovering over that 90% of that that electricity that we are putting. That's

amazing.

>> Wow. I feel like I've been sitting here with my mouth hanging open this whole conversation. I'm learning so much,

conversation. I'm learning so much, David. I'm so excited. I feel like I'm

David. I'm so excited. I feel like I'm going to know just that a little bit more about Fusion than I used to, which was not much at all. Um, so this is

real. You signed this deal with

real. You signed this deal with Microsoft with, I might add, a penalty clause in it. Maybe you don't want to answer this question, but if something

were to go wrong between now and 2028, what do you think's going to be the thing that's go goes wrong? Could you

predict?

>> Yeah. I mean, what I'll tell you is it's it's almost the thing, you know, is that not everything is going to work the way you think it will. And so, what we like that's that's the thing you really know when you're doing something that no

one's ever done before is there will be unexpected delays, whether they're business or they're engineering.

There'll be new things you learn. Some

will accelerate you, some will decelerate you. And so what we've done

decelerate you. And so what we've done is we've built the business to solve problems to be and that's that's part of founder mode. It's not saying, "Wow,

founder mode. It's not saying, "Wow, there's a problem, I can't solve it."

But it's how do I solve it or or I think that might be a problem. How do I invest today so that if it's a problem tomorrow, I will be able to solve it tomorrow. And so we've now that's how

tomorrow. And so we've now that's how we've been successful of building six generations of machines is trying to see as far ahead as we can and plan for that. And so the things I worry about

that. And so the things I worry about are the things a lot of the things we're talking about. What if we're not 95%

talking about. What if we're not 95% efficient but we're 94% efficient? What

if we're 93% efficient? How do we build the systems to be able to evolve that?

What if uh we haven't had this this problem and and and I've been very uh fortunate for it. But what if we have delays in permitting? What if we have delays in actually doing the building?

There are financial penalties on the on a PPA. I think any real agreement that

a PPA. I think any real agreement that you have with with your c with your customer and Microsoft's our customer should have that like like we should be holding businesses accountable for

delivering what they what they say. And

so that was a requirement for us is that we wanted a customer that would that would that would have that as part of the contract. And so it's now building

the contract. And so it's now building the systems in place. Okay, we're 93% efficient. What do we do? Well, we've

efficient. What do we do? Well, we've

built now the manufacturing capacity that's bigger than what we needed for the bare minimum because we're going to need some more power electronics. We're

going to need to do more fusion. We're

going to have to squeeze it a little bit harder. We're going to have to get to a

harder. We're going to have to get to a little bit higher temperature. So let's

now build those systems already so that we can handle that and build the manufacturing and and the engineering to be able to support that as as we learn.

And so a lot of it is starting to think as much as you can around um what are the things that may not work out exactly as you as you planned so you can build the knobs to tweak that so you can

adjust and then keeping a company mindset that's problem solving based and excited and optimistic about solving problems. Um, and in some ways that motivational piece is almost the harder piece than the manufacturing piece.

>> So you just said like you're a problem solver, you iterate, you build, but sometimes there's problems that you have literally no control over government, you know, regulatory, that kind of thing. Did you have any kind of setbacks

thing. Did you have any kind of setbacks where it's like, oh my gosh, they're not going to let us do this thing and I have no workaround. Did you ever have a

no workaround. Did you ever have a moment like that?

>> I think when we founded the company, there were a few of those we were really, really worried about. the the

existential company killers that I don't have any that that I don't have much control over and regulatory was one of those where um I mean I I think we Sam

and I I'm sure talked about this 10 years ago which was even if we were able to solve all the technology problems and build those prototypes that we

eventually did that did fusion you might get regulated in a path of like traditional nuclear fision power and not be able to deploy quickly. That

it takes 10 years to license a machine.

That it takes a billion dollars in in studies before you're ready to go build something even though technology and the physics doesn't warrant that. And so we started investing in it. We started

doing building the honestly building relationships, meeting those regulators.

I remember 2018 I called the Washington Department of Health who handles who now is our regulator but at the time um they regulated particle accelerators in hospitals. I said, "You don't re you

hospitals. I said, "You don't re you don't know about Fusion yet, but you're our regulator. Here is our proposal for

our regulator. Here is our proposal for our our fifth generation machine and how I want you to regulate it. And here's

check. Um, let's go start the process together." And it took years of us

together." And it took years of us working with them to un us to understand what drives them then them to understand us of what our the real safety concerns.

This is big industrial power. There's

things.

>> Well, I was just going to ask, we are all familiar with what the concerns are with nuclear power and we actually talked about it uh at the beginning, but what's the what's the thing that people are worried about with fusion? Like

what's the big disaster? Is it just an explosion because it's so heavy and hot and like what is it?

>> The biggest concerns we have in running Polaris today is mostly high voltage.

It's the electronics. And so when we run these machines, we have large amounts of of pulse power, large amounts of stored electricity that then very quickly 100 gigawatts worth goes into the fusion

machine and then very quickly large amounts of electricity come out of the machine. And so um we don't want humans

machine. And so um we don't want humans in that environment. And so so so that's the biggest one where we actually when we're running Polaris, no one's in the building in that 27,000 ft. Those aren't

the hardest ones though. It's probably

the biggest real safety concern. This is

still an atomic process. You're fusing

atoms together. Um, and much like a particle accelerator in in a hospital.

Um, you do make ionizing radiation, X-rays, you make neutrons. Those come

off of the machine. And so, we want to shield humans from that. It's actually

uh an interesting story of when I went to the Department of Health and I said, "This is our shielding permit. This is

how we're going to protect humans from the machines that are that are making like your particle accelerators that are making ionizing radiation." They said, "Great. where is the patient? Because

"Great. where is the patient? Because

our calculations always have a patient inside the room with the machine. And I

said, "No patient. They're outside the room." Like, "We're going to have just

room." Like, "We're going to have just like in a hospital, we'll have what we call a vault. We'll have a concrete room with a door that closes and you have operators on the outside, but we only have operators." And they said, "Oh,

have operators." And they said, "Oh, this radically changes this. We can go forward and go. We can we can do this quickly." And that's been really

quickly." And that's been really enabling for us to be able to build systems we can monitor and operate those. But while

you're running these machines, when you're doing fusion, you're not in the room with the fusion machine. Just like

you're not you you don't other than the patient, you're not in the room with those big particle accelerators.

>> Well, speaking of Mors law, you could use robots at some point, right, for if you needed um >> Yep.

you know, mechanical things, beings in the room with the with the with Polaris.

>> Yeah, there's work being done all over the world on we call remote access and remote handling for using robots that do that.

>> I have a question from Paul because I said that I was interviewing you and I said, "What question would you ask David?" And he said, I'm going to read

David?" And he said, I'm going to read it. Presumably, you've already done

it. Presumably, you've already done simulations where you achieve net power.

Can you manufacture things that are as perfect as the software? What's the hardest thing to

software? What's the hardest thing to make as perfect as the software?

>> Oh, >> does that make sense?

>> Yeah, that's a good question. That's a

great question. There's sort of two classes of things I think about that are as hard to to make as perfect as the software. One is

software. One is that the physical machines themselves

are are large. They're 40 feet long and but the accuracy of some of the smallest parts we measure in thousandth of an inch, 1,000th of an inch. And so you

have to be able to manufacture components that are both can have the scale when they're all put together of 40 ft long and be as accurate as 1,000th

of an inch. This is well better than one part in a million. And that that's hard to do. That's really really hard to do

to do. That's really really hard to do and it's taken us a lot of work to do that. Uh and early in in in Helon it was

that. Uh and early in in in Helon it was really hard to do. Um we this is a really great question because we um have a technology we use now which seems like

magic to me sometimes in that um laser trackers. Uh is that is that and this is

trackers. Uh is that is that and this is some of the things like scanning LAR you might have for electric cars now.

And you can build in in Polaris in the building of Polaris. We have little retrorelectors, little mirrors all over the building and all over the machine and real time we monitor. We have laser

trackers that can monitor the precision location within a thousandth of an inch over the whole building. And real time as we watch when it gets cold out or hot

outside, the building moves and shifts and we can detect that now.

>> And that's been so so enabling. When we

built Trena, our sixth generation machine, it took us almost a month to align all the parts. We put all the parts on large rails. We aligned the rails and then we had to tweak them in

three dimensions. And we had people out

three dimensions. And we had people out every day with tape measures and even laser tape measures adjusting it, little hammers, shims, all kinds of things. And

now we just put retrorelectors on everything. And we were able to align it

everything. And we were able to align it in in let's say hours, though it might have been faster than that.

>> Wow.

>> Wow.

versus versus versus weeks and a month.

And it it was like in our schedule budget, I had budgeted a month to align this. And they're like, "David, it's

this. And they're like, "David, it's done." And I'm like, "What do you mean

done." And I'm like, "What do you mean it's done? Like [laughter]

it's done? Like [laughter] it can't be done. I'm going to come down here and I'm going to like check the measurements because you just told me you accelerated from a month to an hour." And that's that's the power of

hour." And that's that's the power of some technology development or technology evolution. Um the other is

technology evolution. Um the other is the same thing as a time scale is that we have the the the a hot gas moves quickly and so you have to control it to

this very high speed 1 billionth of a second and it's very easy to simulate 1 billionth of a second. This gigahertz

computer can go do it no problem but doing it in real life is hard. It's

things like the fiber optic cable I mentioned is great, but depending on the length, the speed of light in that fiber optic cable has a given time. And so,

and that's longer than the time we care about. And so, you have to now measure

about. And so, you have to now measure and understand the length of that fiber optic cable because the speed of light will limit you to a given time scale.

And so doing it in real life in real space, the the physical limits of the speed of light, the f the the speed of electrons moving in wires, the turn on time of a real semiconductor versus a

computer model. Those are a lot of the

computer model. Those are a lot of the things that that that we spend a lot of time on is understanding those details and and getting them right. Some of the things that have gone the most wrong have been not getting those right. On

Trent, it took a month to align the machine. I didn't plan for a month. And

machine. I didn't plan for a month. And

on Polaris, I planned for a month because I learned my lesson, but not on Trento. And so that we just burned

Trento. And so that we just burned schedule on that because we didn't get it right. And on Polaris, we it it went

it right. And on Polaris, we it it went faster, which is great. But similarly on on some of the details of timing and how do you get everything to to be as accurate in time as possible. That has

we've spent a lot of time on that and um and it's been some of the some of the hardest challenges in in practice because you don't learn that lesson until you build build the whole machine until you have these large scale

systems. The small scale on the bench works perfect. No problem. Go on the big

works perfect. No problem. Go on the big scale where now the fiber optics are much longer and you missed it. And so

you got to go build that in the computer system to correct for that.

>> We can do that. But that's that's been that's been some really interesting engineering challenges.

>> You have a lot on your plate, David.

[laughter] >> I know. like how do you do all this?

>> Yeah, this is a lot.

>> We're overwhelmed.

>> But I do wonder one thing that I'm imagining probably isn't one of your 99 problems is um competition and not because there aren't other people companies working on this, but I just

get the feeling that that's not something that you lose sleep about at night. Is that right? generally we don't

night. Is that right? generally we don't worry about fusion competition um or even natural gas and and other other power system competition. I think

the need is so great in the world especially with AI data centers and the power need there and electric vehicles and as we've gotten cheaper and cheaper electric vehicles and more and more of

them the need for clean base electricity is so big that the competition is with ourselves. It's just how do we build as

ourselves. It's just how do we build as absolutely as fast as possible. We do

think about it from the point of view of of giving away the technology sort of publishing schematics and and how we think about how we talk about it. But

really and at the end of the day it comes back to how how do we just build as absolutely fast as possible.

>> Well, I guess vision if it cleans up its image could be a competitive technology.

I don't know. I don't know if that's true or not, but >> I think it it it will always come down to timelines. Um, our goal is to get to

to timelines. Um, our goal is to get to where we're building fusion on assembly lines, a gigafactory of fusion generators where they're coming off the

assembly line. They're being then

assembly line. They're being then deployed very quickly as well. One of

the things that I was surprised by that went better than expected and and and um because we were told by every expert that you couldn't do this is part of founder mode. We were told by experts

founder mode. We were told by experts you can't do this. It's not a thing that's ever been done. um which is for Orion, our our power plant. We were

granted um a determination of non-significance for the environmental permit. And this this is like in the

permit. And this this is like in the >> such a legal word >> in the weeds of how uh environmental permits work, but it's a a

classification given to some solar farms. It's not even given to most of them because because the environmental impact can be so big and and they said

no no nuclear power can ever have it.

Fusion power is too new. It'll never

happen. And we went through multiple years of working with the experts of these are the real concerns of fusion.

These are the hazards of fusion. And

they said no like this is your classification. And what that means is

classification. And what that means is we could start building today. We and we could break ground. And we we got that determination. and we got a lease

determination. and we got a lease approved and then had had we're were moving Earth within the hour of the lease being signed because of of the the

scale of the impact of fusion is so low that you can move that fast and I don't know that that um uraniumbased nuclear power will ever be able to do that >> we'll ever do that. Yeah. So the goal is

non-significance which is kind of funny when you think about it [laughter] >> that the environmental impact is so low that we can do the study deploy it and then our goal is right now we still

deploy site by site you say I'm going to go to this community I'm going to build a plant here um we you spend a year working with the community and the local um environmental agencies the utility

you go multiple years you now then go deploy a plant goal is to change the the metric here and make it not like building airports where you go and work

at building the site, but like building airplanes. Um, we're up in here in

airplanes. Um, we're up in here in Everett and right by the big Boeing plants watching the planes come out of the building every day and that's where you want fusion. If you were going to

deploy terawows and trillions of dollars worth of power plants and generators, you have to do it in that way. So now we build machines right now on conveyor belts um behind me here in Everett and

uh and that's that's that's weird for Fusion.

>> David, what do you do to relax and have fun in in your minimal amount of time that you have?

>> I have a 9-year-old son who's into ice hockey now, joined an ice hockey team.

So I have become one of those parents at the at the uh I love my Saturday ice hockey games and so [laughter] that that's fun. Um and then and then a lot

that's fun. Um and then and then a lot of um you know trying to take some of the engineering, the science, iterative development things that I have done and bring that home. It's Halloween season.

It's my favorite season.

>> And so um it's a lot of how do you build an uh animatronics and how do you take some of that engineering, the computer programming and and bring that home and and then so lots of fun projects along those lines.

>> Oh, I bet.

>> Does your son like those?

Mostly. Mostly some sometimes it's uh cringe is the word that I've I've learned. [laughter]

learned. [laughter] >> Get familiar with it.

>> Yeah. It only gets worse, David. It only

gets worse.

>> The thing about this interview to me that feels so profound is that I feel like, you know, generations will look back on this weird time in history when

power was expensive and limited. And

man, David, if Helon solves this, it's like as big as the industrial revolution kind of thing. I mean, do you ever step back from all the things you have going

on and think about that?

>> I do. when we even when we were in Y Combinator and the business case for Helion and the problem that we were trying to solve was

big. It was fossil fuels. We're still

big. It was fossil fuels. We're still

growing. Um we're still still u powering more coal, using more coal than we ever have before for humans. And we are going to go solve that. We are going to go solve that. We're going to go replace

solve that. We're going to go replace fossil fuel plants. But at the same time, power usage in the United States at least was growing at 2% per year. Not

a rapidly growing market. And in fact, if you look back at the cost of electricity levelized to inflation, the cost of electricity was decreasing

then 10 years ago. That changed that changed with the massive growth in the EV market and now large scale data centers. We're now seeing not 2% growth

centers. We're now seeing not 2% growth per year in electricity infrastructure and deployment in the United States, but 20%. We're no longer seeing prices go

20%. We're no longer seeing prices go down a few percent per year. They're

radically increasing all over the world, including the United States. And so the problem is much bigger than than what we the the problem we are trying to solve now is much more pressing than it was

when we founded the company. And so to me the pressure to solve the problem to deploy absolutely as fast as possible at scale um and not just one power plant. I

guess what I say to the team sometimes is if we demonstrate that you can do fusion at low cost and efficiently and that's all we do that we have failed. If

we deploy one power plant that puts electricity on the grid from fusion for the first time historic achievement we've failed. We have to be at a place

we've failed. We have to be at a place where we have built a product and a business that can build generators gigawatts per day of deployed power at scale and deploy it in the world and

create both the business, the technology, the regulatory environment to be able to go do that. That's when we will have succeeded because the world needs that and and the demand is increasing and it's increasing at a rate

that we haven't seen before. And I I think that I worry folks are underestimating the growth and and the pressure we're going to find for energy and electricity specifically.

>> You're selling this power to utilities uh in at least in the residential sense.

Is that right?

>> So, this gets into some of the really interesting um nerdiness around the power utility market and and how

electricity is done. that for Orion, our PPA with Microsoft is to deploy 50 megawatts of electricity to the grid and it will be to Microsoft but through a

utility in this case the Chillan the Chillan public utility >> the the PUD um and so it'll be electrons that go on the grid and then Microsoft will be able

to pay us through a power marketer constellation but what we're also working with is our second customer customer New core um who's a large steel manufacturer to not do that but in fact

to put the the generator right on their site 500 megawatts about 10 times as big right on their site and give them power directly. That one's called behind the

directly. That one's called behind the meter. And that's something that we

meter. And that's something that we don't really do industrial scale. Almost

always it's a large central generating station that goes to the grid on a transmission line and then goes to a data center. But our goal is to be able

data center. But our goal is to be able to put generators on the data center, on the manufacturing, on the factory sites and provide them power directly. It's

much more efficient and you can do some really cool engineering things around tailoring how you provide power, not for the grid, but you're providing it for a data center which wants different kinds

of power. It wants DC. It wants higher

of power. It wants DC. It wants higher voltage. It wants intermittent loads. it

voltage. It wants intermittent loads. it

and and so being able to dial that to the data center needs or to the steel manufacturing facilities needs, it would be really powerful from an engineering point. We're pushing that as fast as we

point. We're pushing that as fast as we can.

>> That makes total sense. But like I said, for residential, unless you're going to build something that can actually be attached to someone's, you know, garage, like we're still all going to get this

power from our utility. Is that correct?

>> For residential power, I think that's absolutely right. Um fusion

absolutely right. Um fusion fundamentally is still large scale industrial power. We're going to make

industrial power. We're going to make them absolutely as small as we can and they're still going to be big. It's

still going to be a 25,000 square foot building. It's going to have a

building. It's going to have a substation and it's going to be industrial scale power. And so we want modular where you have one generator per town rather um but it'll still be at that industrial scale at the scale that

we're trying to deploy. I think that's okay that that that we want to be able to deploy throughout the world uh as fast as possible at large scale. And so

some of those large industrial facilities is are going to be required.

>> And that infrastructure is already built, right? That infrastructure is

built, right? That infrastructure is already built. It already works. So like

already built. It already works. So like

that does seem like the most efficient way to get this energy to the world like like is your goal.

>> I think that's the goal. What we're

looking for is the new stuff that comes online, that new AI data center doesn't require lots of new transmission lines.

So now you can take Fusion, put it on site there and power that data center directly rather than having to build a bunch of transmission lines also which is right which is a real tough problem

>> right?

>> I mean AI companies are going to go bananas when >> fusion actually works for them. I mean

because they they the cost of running running um their companies are so expensive. I mean are do you get people

expensive. I mean are do you get people calling you up saying hey how's it going? what's what's the timeline

going? what's what's the timeline looking like?

>> Yeah. When can you deploy cuz I'm we're ready for you. Um and so so so that's for instance having Microsoft as as a first customer. That's a lot of the

first customer. That's a lot of the driver there. And we we were working

driver there. And we we were working with Microsoft since 2015 almost right after Y Cominator. We started working with them where they were visiting us watching our prototypes and development.

We were working with their experts. They

have a whole nuclear power and electricity teams. Shockingly, >> probably not shocking any since they're >> not shockingly. Yeah,

>> they have they deploy massive amounts of power. Um, and um, uh, as we built our

power. Um, and um, uh, as we built our systems and proved that they did work the way we expected them to.

>> This is just such a long game. I'm like,

I'm I'm just so excited to be on the sidelines like, you know, cheering for you and learning more and watching this and I cannot wait to see how this all

plays out. I feel so optimistic after

plays out. I feel so optimistic after talking to you, David.

>> And next time you are on on a on a field trip and you want to come visit and see a working fusion system, come out.

>> I do. I see a working fusion system.

>> I'm I I'm not joking. Carolyn and I are going to go on the road and we're going to stop by and and we're going to see uh Polaris and and everything there. I

can't wait.

>> Perfect.

>> Got to be great. Um, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I feel

like our listeners are going to this is going to be such a treat for them to have heard all all of this this story. I

know I learned a lot. So, I'm totally psyched we got to have this long form conversation with you today.

>> Yeah, much better than 15 minutes. There

too much to cover here in 15 minutes.

>> Awesome, David. Best of luck over the next um few years and I just I cannot wait to see what happens with with Helon.

>> Thank you for having me today.

>> Thank you, David. Thanks.

>> All right. Bye

>> bye.

>> Carolyn, that was so interesting.

>> That was complicated and there were definitely some very complicated scientific concepts, but for the most part, I think the way David explains it, it's pretty digestible and pretty understandable. And it's actually so

understandable. And it's actually so cool to learn stuff like this that I know. I feel like I'm smarter than I was

know. I feel like I'm smarter than I was this morning when I woke up.

>> I certainly understand fusion better.

>> Yeah. Um, so do I.

>> I loved that conversation.

And it is such a long game that he's playing.

>> Yeah. I kept thinking about like this is like pharmaceutical. This is like

like pharmaceutical. This is like biotech where there's just you have to you have to be in it for the long haul because drug development takes forever

and so does nuclear fusion. [laughter]

>> I mean it is it is world changing if this stuff works which he's proven that it can work. It's just a matter of deploying it like commercially right.

scaling and deploying.

>> Yeah, scaling and deploying.

>> And I thought it was really interesting that he's building that or he has he's manufacturing in-house his own helium that he could sell. Part of me I wanted to ask although I just maybe it's just a

whole such a tangent, but like why not license that to people since it's so desirable, but I'm sure that you know it's probably like well that will help that will distract him. It's a it's

losing focus and he was so adamant that focus is so important which obviously is. I love how Y Cominator taught them

is. I love how Y Cominator taught them how important focus was and forced them to focus.

>> Yeah. No, that's great.

>> You know, cuz that makes me feel like we add value to the hardest of hard tech.

>> Yeah.

>> I definitely would like on our little field trip when we go to see We're going to go see Stoke, right?

>> We're maybe going to see Charm. We're

going to go see Boom. But we're going to we got to go on a little field trip.

social radars on the road, field trip to these things and see it because I think you saw it, you'd come away with your mind blown even more than hearing the description cuz these are

>> this is a big operation.

>> Yeah, no kidding. Yeah, I would love to do that. That's a great idea.

do that. That's a great idea.

>> I can't wait for that episode to come out. It's going to be a great one.

out. It's going to be a great one.

>> It's going to be a great one.

>> I'll I'll see you on the next one.

>> Okay, bye.

>> Okay, bye.

>> [music]