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China and the U.S. are in a race to create the first grid-scale nuclear fusion energy. After decades of U.S. leadership, China is catching up by spending twice as much and building projects at record speed.

Often called the holy grail of clean energy, nuclear fusion creates four times more energy per kilogram of fuel than traditional nuclear fission and four million times more than burning coal, with no greenhouse gasses or long-term radioactive waste. If all goes to plan, it will be at least a $1 trillion market by 2050, according to Ignition Research.

There’s just one big problem. 

“The only working fusion power plants right now in the universe are stars,” said Dennis Whyte, professor of nuclear science and engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The U.S. was first to large-scale use of fusion with a hydrogen bomb test in 1952. In the seven decades since, scientists around the world have been struggling to harness fusion reactions for power generation.

Fusion reactions occur when hydrogen atoms reach extreme enough temperatures that they fuse together, forming a super-heated gas called plasma. The mass shed during the process can, in theory, be turned into huge amounts of energy, but the plasma is hard to control. One popular method uses powerful magnets to suspend and control the plasma inside a tokamak, which is a metal donut-shaped device. Another uses high-energy lasers, pointed at a peppercorn-sized pellet of fuel, rapidly compressing and imploding it. 

That’s how the U.S. pulled off the historic first fusion ignition, producing net positive energy at the Lawrence Livermore National Ignition Facility, or NIF, in 2022.

Here, the preamplifier module increases the laser energy as it heads toward the target chamber at the National Ignition Facitility.

Photo courtesy Damien Jemison at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Since then, private investment in U.S. fusion startups has soared to more than $8 billion, up from $1.2 billion in 2021, according to the Fusion Industry Association. Of the FIA’s 40 member companies, 25 of them are based in the U.S.

Traditional nuclear power, created from fission instead of fusion, has seen a big uptick in investment as Big Tech looks for ways to fill the ever-increasing power needs of AI data centers. Amazon, Google and Meta have signed a pledge to help triple nuclear energy worldwide by 2050. 

“If you care about AI, if you care about energy leadership … you have to make investments into fusion,” FIA CEO Andrew Holland said. “This is something that if the United States doesn’t lead on, then China will.”

Money, size and speed

While the U.S. has the most active nuclear power plants, China is king of new projects. 

Despite breaking ground on its first reactor nearly four decades after the U.S. pioneered the tech, China’s now building far more fission power plants than any other country.

China entered the fusion race in the early 2000s, about 50 years after the U.S., when it joined more than 30 nations to collaborate on the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor fusion megaproject in France. But ITER has since hit major delays.

The race is on between individual nations, but the U.S. private sector remains in the lead. Of the $8 billion in global private fusion investment, $6 billion is in the U.S., according to the FIA.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a startup born out of MIT, has raised the most money, nearly $2 billion from the likes of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Google. 

Washington-based Helion has raised $1 billion from investors like Open AI’s Sam Altman and a highly ambitious deal with Microsoft to deliver fusion power to the grid by 2028. Google-backed TAE Technologies has raised $1.2 billion.

“Whoever has essentially abundant limitless energy … can impact everything you think of,” said Michl Binderbauer, CEO of TAE Technologies. “That is a scary thought if that’s in the wrong hands.” 

When it comes to public funding, China is way ahead. 

Beijing is putting a reported $1.5 billion annually toward the effort while U.S. federal dollars for fusion have averaged about $800 million annually the last few years, according to the Energy Department’s Office of Fusion Energy Sciences.

President Donald Trump ramped up support for nuclear, including fusion, during his first term, and that continued under former President Joe Biden. It’s unclear what fusion funding will look like in Trump’s second term, amid massive federal downsizing. 

U.S. senators and fusion experts published a report in February calling for $10 billion of federal funds to help keep the U.S. from losing its lead. 

But the U.S. may already have lost the lead when it comes to reactor size. Generally, the bigger the footprint, the more efficiently a reactor can heat and confine the plasma, increasing the chances for net positive energy.

A satellite image from January 11, 2025, shows a massive nuclear project in Mianyang, China, that appears to include four laser bays pointing at a containment dome roughly the size of a football field, about twice as big as the U.S. National Ignition Fusion Facility.

Planet Labs PBC

A series of satellite images provided to CNBC by Planet Labs shows the rapid building in 2024 of a giant new laser-fusion site in China. The containment dome where the fusion reaction will occur is roughly twice the size of NIF, the U.S. laser-fusion project, CNA Corporation’s Decker Eveleth said. The China site is likely a fusion-fission hybrid, FIA’s Holland said. 

“A fusion-fission hybrid essentially is like replicating a bomb, but as a power plant. It would never work, never fly in a place like the United States, where you have a regulatory regime that determines safety,” Holland said. “But in a regime like China, where it doesn’t matter what the people who live next door say, if the government says we want to do it, we’re going to do it.”

China’s existing national tokamak project, EAST, has been setting records, volleying with France’s project WEST in the last couple months for the longest ever containment of plasma inside a reactor, although that’s a less monumental milestone than net positive energy.

Another huge state-funded Chinese project, CRAFT, is set to reach completion this year. The $700 million 100-acre fusion campus in eastern China will also have a new tokamak called BEST that is expected to be finished in 2027.

China’s CRAFT appears to follow a U.S. plan published by hundreds of scientists in 2020, Holland said. 

“Congress has not done anything to spend the money to put this into action,” he said. “We published this thing, and the Chinese then went and built it.”

U.S. fusion startup Helion told CNBC some Chinese projects are copying its patented designs, too.

“China, specifically, we’re seeing investment from the state agencies to invest in companies to then replicate U.S. companies’ designs,” said David Kirtley, founder and CEO of Helion.

Manpower and materials

China’s rapid rollout of new fusion projects comes at a time when American efforts have largely been focused on upgrading existing machines, some of them more than 30 years old.

“Nobody wants to work on old dinosaurs, ” said TAE’s Binderbauer, adding that new projects attract more talent. “There’s a bit of a brain drain.”

In the early 2000s, budget cuts to domestic fusion research forced U.S. universities to halt work on new machines and send researchers to learn on other country’s machines, including China’s.

“Instead of building new ones, we went to China and helped them build theirs, thinking, ‘Oh, that’d be great. They’ll have the facility. We’ll be really smart,'” said Bob Mumgaard, co-founder and CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems. “Well, that was a big mistake.” 

China now has more fusion patents than any other country, and 10 times the number of doctorates in fusion science and engineering as the U.S., according to a report from Nikkei Asia.

“There’s a finite labor pool in the West that all the companies compete for,” Binderbauer said. “That is a fundamental constraint.”

Commonwealth Fusion Systems SPARC tokamak being assembled in December 2024 in Devens, Massachusetts, is scheduled to use superconducting magnets to reach fusion ignition in 2027.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems

Besides manpower, fusion projects need a huge amount of materials, such as high power magnets, specific metals, capacitors and power semiconductors. Helion’s Kirtley said the timeline of the company’s latest prototype, Polaris, was set entirely by the availability of semiconductors.

China is making moves to corner the supply chain for many of these materials, in a similar play to how it came to dominate solar and EV batteries.

“China is investing ten times the rate that the United States is in advanced material development,” Kirtley said. “That’s something we have got to change.”

Shanghai-based fusion company Energy Singularity told CNBC in a statement that it “undoubtedly” benefits from China’s “efficient supply chain.” In June, Energy Singularity said it successfully created plasma in record time, just two years after beginning the design of its tokamak.

That’s still a far cry from reaching grid-scale, commercial fusion power. Helion aims to be first with a goal of 2028. Commonwealth has announced the site in Virginia where it plans to bring the first fusion power plant, ARC, online in the early 2030s.

“Even though the first ones might be in the U.S., I don’t think we should take comfort in that,” said MIT’s Whyte. “The finish line is actually a mature fusion industry that’s producing products for use around the world, including in AI centers.”

Watch: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/03/14/china-is-catching-the-us-in-nuclear-fusion-amid-ai-power-demand.html

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Y Combinator startups are fastest growing, most profitable in fund history because of AI

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March 15, 2025

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Y Combinator startups are fastest growing, most profitable in fund history because of AI

Silicon Valley’s earliest stage companies are getting a major boost from artificial intelligence.

Startup accelerator Y Combinator — known for backing Airbnb, Dropbox and Stripe — this week held its annual demo day in San Francisco, where founders pitched their startups to an auditorium of potential venture capital investors.

Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan told CNBC that this group is growing significantly faster than past cohorts and with actual revenue. For the last nine months, the entire batch of YC companies in aggregate grew 10% per week, he said.

“It’s not just the number one or two companies — the whole batch is growing 10% week on week,” said Tan, who is also a Y Combinator alum. “That’s never happened before in early-stage venture.”

That growth spurt is thanks to leaps in artificial intelligence, Tan said. 

App developers can now offload or automate more repetitive tasks, and they can generate new code using large language models. Tan called it “vibe coding,” a term for letting models take the wheel and generate software. In some cases, AI can code entire apps.

The ability for AI to subsidize an otherwise heavy workload has allowed these companies to build with fewer people. For about a quarter of the current YC startups, 95% of their code was written by AI, Tan said.

“That sounds a little scary, but on the other hand, what that means for founders is that you don’t need a team of 50 or 100 engineers,” said Tan, adding that companies are reaching as much as $10 million in revenue with teams of less than 10 people. “You don’t have to raise as much. The capital goes much longer.”

The growth-at-all-costs mindset of Silicon Valley during the zero-interest-rate era has gone “out the window,” said Tan, pointing to a renewed focus on profitability. That focus on the bottom line also applies to megacap tech companies. Google, Meta and Amazon have gone through multiple rounds of layoffs and pulled back on hiring.

While that’s shaken some engineers, Tan described it as an opportunity. 

It’s easier to build a startup, and the top people in tech don’t have to prove their worth by going to work at big tech companies, he said.

“There’s a lot of anxiety in the job market, especially from young software engineers,” Tan said. “Maybe it’s that engineer who couldn’t get a job at Meta or Google who actually can build a standalone business making $10 million or $100 million a year with ten people — that’s such a powerful moment in software.”

About 80% of the YC companies that presented this week were AI focused, with a handful of robotics and semiconductor startups. This group of companies has been able to prove earlier commercial use compared to previous generations, Tan said. 

“There’s a ton of hype, but what’s unique about this moment is that people are actually getting commercial validation,” he said. “If you’re an investor at demo day, you’ll be able to call a real customer, and that person will say, ‘Yeah, we use the software every single day.'”

Y Combinator was founded in 2005 by Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris and Trevor Blackwell. The firm invests $500,000 in startups in exchange for an equity stake. Those founders then enter a three-month program at the San Francisco headquarters and get guidance from partners and YC alumni. Demo day is a way to attract additional capital.

The firm has funded more than 5,3000 companies, which it says are worth more than $800 billion in total. Over a dozen of them are public, and more than 100 are valued at $1 billion or more. More than 15,000 companies apply to get into the accelerator, with about a 1% acceptance rate.

More of these venture capital incubators have popped up throughout the past decade, and more capital has flocked to early stage startups. Despite the competition, Tan argued that Y Combinator has an edge thanks to its strong network. He pointed to the number of highly valued portfolio companies rising, and pushed back on the idea that specialized incubators were taking business.

“About 20 to 30% of the companies during YC change their idea and sometimes their industry entirely. And if you end up with an incubator that is very specialized, you might not be able to change into the thing that you were supposed to,” Tan said. “We think that the network effects and the advantages of doing YC have only become more bold.”

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After Elon Musk’s Delaware exit, state lawmakers weigh bill to overhaul corporate law

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March 15, 2025

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After Elon Musk’s Delaware exit, state lawmakers weigh bill to overhaul corporate law

Tesla CEO Elon Musk looks on as US President Donald Trump speaks to the press as they stand next to a Tesla vehicle on the South Portico of the White House on March 11, 2025 in Washington, DC. 

Mandel Ngan | AFP | Getty Images

Tesla CEO Elon Musk turned Delaware’s corporate law into a hot-button topic last year after a judge there ruled that his $56 billion pay package from 2018 was illegally granted and should be rescinded.

In social media posts, Musk smeared the judge and became an outspoken critic of Delaware’s judiciary, moving the site of incorporation for Tesla and his other companies out of the state while encouraging others to follow suit. Dropbox moved its site of incorporation to Nevada, and Bill Ackman said his Pershing Square Capital Management would exit Delaware. Meta and Walmart are reportedly considering leaving.

After a flurry of such announcements, Delaware’s Senate Majority Leader Bryan Townsend, a corporate attorney by trade and former clerk for Delaware’s Court of Chancery, began looking into the matter with fellow elected leaders. He then moved to sponsor a bill, known as SB 21, aimed at making Delaware a more attractive state for businesses.

On Thursday, the state Senate voted to pass an amended version of SB 21. If it passes Delaware’s House of Representatives, in a vote expected next week, and gets signed by the governor, the bill would change the state’s corporate law. Notably, it would alter how companies can use independent directors and other officials to ensure deals they’ve made will pass muster in court, and limit the records that shareholders can obtain from companies when investigating possible wrongdoing.

Townsend told CNBC that the aim of the bill is to ensure Delaware corporate law is clearer and more predictable, and that the state remains attractive to both investors and corporate leaders.

Many institutional investors, legal scholars and shareholders’ attorneys have opposed the bill, arguing that it would harm minority shareholders and allow boards and executives to make decisions based on their own interests rather than for the broader investor base.

The International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN), consisting of investors with more than $90 trillion in combined assets under management, spoke out against the bill on Tuesday. According to its website, ICGN members include Alliance Bernstein, the Swedish AP funds, BlackRock, CalPERS, CalSTRS, Franklin Templeton, Norges and Vanguard.

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ICGN CEO Jen Sisson cautioned in a letter sent to Delaware state senators and representatives that SB 21 “will be detrimental to shareholder rights, with potentially significant negative implications for long-term returns for investors, including people saving for their retirements, current retirees and other individuals investing their savings.”

Sisson also said the bill would “reduce judicial oversight” and diminish shareholders’ trust that they can “seek remedies through litigation, when necessary.”

The anti-Delaware sentiment has at least some political motivations. While aligning themselves with President Donald Trump, executives like Musk and Ackman are trying to publicly undermine what they describe as “activist judges” who have issued rulings they found disagreeable.

Musk also has a lot of money potentially at stake. If adopted, legal scholars have argued, the new law could help the world’s richest person in his effort to reverse the court’s order in January 2024 that rescinded his mammoth pay package.

Unusual rollout

In her ruling, Delaware Chancery Court Judge Kathaleen McCormick said Musk’s compensation plan had been inappropriately set by Tesla’s board, which was controlled by Musk, and approved by shareholders who were misled by Tesla’s proxy materials before being asked to vote on the matter. Musk filed for an appeal, and the case is now in the hands of the Delaware Supreme Court.

As CNBC previously reported, Richards, Layton & Finger, a corporate defense firm whose clients include Musk and Tesla, helped draft the bill. The firm told CNBC that it wasn’t working on behalf of any specific client and that it was “part of a group, including highly respected lawyers, professors, and former jurists.”

Other shareholders’ attorneys have opposed SB21, or called for significant revisions, in part because of the bill’s unusual rollout.

Changes to Delaware corporate law historically have been drafted by a broad coalition of attorneys representing companies, executives and minority shareholders, and who are part of the Delaware State Bar Association’s Corporation Law Council (CLC).

SB 21 was introduced to Delaware’s legislature on Feb. 17, without any initial review or participation by the CLC.

Matt Meyer, candidate in the 2024 Delaware gubernatorial election to replace term-limited incumbent governor John Carney.

Courtesy: New Castle County

Townsend said Delaware’s elected leaders had fielded complaints from a number of public companies, or attorneys representing them, which he declined to name. Their frustrations had reached a “boiling point” he said, while other states like Texas and Nevada were making a concerted effort to provide an alternative.

“We wanted to address what we can legislatively,” Townsend said.

If Delaware’s House passes the bill, it would hit the desk of Democratic Gov. Matt Meyer.

Even though Delaware is a heavily Democratic state — Trump lost by almost 15% in the 2024 election — the legislation has support from some prominent party leaders, including the governor, as well as corporate defense attorneys, legal scholars and former Delaware litigants unhappy with prior rulings in the state.

Meyer said in an interview on Tuesday with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin that attorneys and corporate executives have told him that “there is some loss of clarity, predictability and fairness” in Delaware’s corporate law that he believes should be remedied.

A group of 21 law firms, including Cravath, Swaine & Moore, Gibson Dunn and Latham Watkins, sent a letter of encouragement to the state’s general assembly dated March 11.

The group wrote that the bill “provides statutory definitions and safe harbors that enhance clarity and will facilitate proactive evaluation of director appointments, conflicts cleansing and transactional planning.” SB 21 could also help companies incorporated in Delaware to “streamline corporate decision-making and transactional execution,” the lawyers wrote.

In his CNBC interview, Meyer downplayed fears that a so-called DExit was underway, a reference to a mass exodus of companies out of Delaware to incorporate in other states.

Delaware boasts 2.2 million corporate entities from around the world that are registered in the state, including 81% of U.S. companies that went public last year, Meyer said, adding, “The idea that we’re losing something is not totally accurate.”

When he was running for governor, Meyer’s campaign was heavily supported by entrepreneur Phil Shawe, a former Delaware litigant who became an outspoken critic of the state’s Court of Chancery after he was sanctioned in a case concerning who should maintain ownership of a business he started with his ex-fiancee. In 2018, he moved incorporation of the company, TransPerfect, to Nevada.

Last year, Shawe spent $2 million on an ad campaign slamming Delaware, and supporting Musk, all while encouraging other companies to flee the state. Shawe also contributed over $1 million to fund a political action committee supporting Meyer.

Shawe told CNBC, in an emailed statement, that he was not involved in drafting SB21 but “had lots of concerns and ideas” about Delaware’s Court of Chancery, and was “proud to have been at the forefront of this important discussion.”

Gov. Meyer’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.

WATCH: Interview with Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer

Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer: The idea that the state is losing its corporate brand isn't accurate

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Intel’s new CEO receives $66 million in options and stock grants on top of $1 million salary

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March 14, 2025

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Intel's new CEO receives million in options and stock grants on top of million salary

Intel appoints Lip-Bu Tan as CEO.

Courtesy: Intel

New Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan will receive total compensation of $1 million in salary and about $66 million in stock options and grants vesting over the coming years, according to filing on Friday with the SEC.

Tan was named as the chief of Intel this week, spurring hopes that the chip industry veteran can turn around the struggling company. Intel shares are up nearly 20% so far in 2025, and most of those gains came this week, following Tan’s appointment. He starts next week.

Tan will receive $1 million in salary, and he is eligible for an annual bonus worth $2 million.

He will also receive stock units in a long-term equity grant valued at $14.4 million, as well as a performance grant of $17 million in Intel shares. Both grants will vest over a period of five years, although Tan won’t earn any of those shares if Intel’s stock price drops over the next three years. He can earn more stock if the company’s share price outperforms the market.

Tan will receive a package of stock options worth $9.6 million, as well as a new hire option grant worth $25 million.

In total, Tan’s compensation package has about $66 million in long-term equity awards and options in addition to salary, bonuses, and legal expenses. If Intel goes through a change of control, Tan could be eligible for accelerated vesting, according to the filing.

“Lip-Bu’s compensation reflects his experience and credentials as an accomplished technology leader with deep industry experience and is market competitive,” Intel said in an emailed comment. “The vast majority of his compensation is equity-based and tied to long-term shareholder value creation.”

Separately, Tan agreed to purchase $25 million in Intel shares and hold them in order to be eligible for the grants and bonuses.

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Jim Cramer talks impact of Intel's new CEO announcement

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