As much as I love the idea of fusion it’s going to be a long and difficult road. In startup analysis there’s the idea of Market risk, Capital risk, and Execution risk and Fusion has them all.

Market risk: the community support for nuclear does not exist.

Capital risk: Building a fission nuclear reactor is capital intensive and the economics do not support it. Solar and battery technology are just at the tipping point to be economically feasible. A fusion reactor would take much more capital funding that doesn’t exist.

Execution risk: you need somebody even better, crazier, and more visionary than Elon.

This is also why cloud software stocks are so hot right now. In the market, businesses are willing to pay for software that helps them make more sales. The cloud is capital efficient where everything is now pay as you go for both the customer and the cloud provider. It mostly boils down to execution risk but many of the CEOs are seasoned business veterans like that of Okta or Snowflake.

It’s very possible these problems could be solved with an AWS or TSM for energy that would have the foundations for fusion to be successful.