The billionaires backing nuclear fusion—including Jeff Bezos— are all competing with a multinational project in France that is using $20 billion of taxpayer money
alking with Michl Binderbauer into his 2-acre laboratory feels a bit like taking a factory tour with Willy Wonka. In one corner Binderbauer, chief executive of TAE Technologies, shows off a new machine that blasts cancer tumors with a neutron beam. Engineers huddle in a control room. Beyond their window: Norman.
TAE, known until last year as Tri Alpha Energy, has raised $600 million, most recently at a valuation of more than $2 billion. Investors include the late Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital, the Rockefeller family’s Venrock, and Big Sky Capital, family money of billionaire stock trader Charles Schwab. They’re betting that TAE will be able to tame fusion into a source of electricity.
“With fission it’s a chain reaction—once you’re in, it’s a like a pact with the devil; it’s hard to get out,” says Binderbauer, an effusive talker who runs TAE from a eucalyptus-lined industrial park southeast of Los Angeles. “With fusion you don’t have that. It’s tricky to get started and even trickier to keep going.”
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