Nuclear fusion breakthrough: Scientists generate more power than used to create reaction
On Tuesday, the head of the Department of Energy and other federal scientific leaders announced that a fusion reaction run at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California achieved net energy, meaning the reaction generated more energy than was put in to initiate the reaction. It is the first time humankind has achieved this landmark.
Fusion is the way that the sun makes power, but recreating a useful fusion reaction here on earth has eluded scientists for decades. Achieving net positive energy paves the way for fusion to move from a lab science to a usable energy source, although large scale commercialization of fusion could still be decades away.
Fusion is particularly attractive given the increasing urgency of climate change because if it can be commercialized at scale, it produces no carbon emissions, nor does it produce the long-lasting nuclear waste associated with nuclear fission, which is the type of nuclear energy used to make energy today.
The National Ignition Facility target chamber at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is where scientists shoot lasers and watch and measure what happens when those lasers collide on a fuel source. Temperatures of 100 million degrees and pressures extreme enough to compress a target up to 100 times the density of lead are created in this facility.
Photo by Damien Jemison/ Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
“Monday, December 5, 2022 was an important day in science,” Jill Hruby, the National Nuclear Security Administration Administrator, said at a press conference announcing the news on Tuesday in Washington D.C. “Reaching ignition in a controlled fusion experiment is an achievement that has come after more than 60 years of global research, development, engineering and experimentation.”
Reaching ignition means the fusion experiment produced more energy from fusion than the laser energy that used to drive the reaction. Since the experiment, the team has been analyzing data to be able to make this official announcement.
“This is important. Earlier results were records, but not yet producing more energy out than was put in,” Andrew Holland, the CEO of the industry’s trade group, the Fusion Industry Association, told CNBC. “For the first time on Earth, scientists have confirmed a fusion energy experiment released more power than it takes to initiate, proving the physical basis for fusion energy. This will lead fusion to be a safe and sustainable energy source in the near future.”
In the experiment on Dec. 5, about two megajoules (a unit of energy) went into the reaction and about three megajoules came out, said Marvin Adams, Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration. “A gain of 1.5,” Adams said.
For the experiment, super high powered lasers are all directed at a very tiny fuel target at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “During experiments, 192 high energy lasers converge on a target about the size of a peppercorn heating a capsule of deuterium and tritium to over 3 million degrees Celsius and briefly simulating the conditions of a star,” Hruby said.
The main mission of the National Lab is studying nuclear power for use in national defense, and this nuclear fusion research is part of an effort established in 1996 by then President Clinton to maintain confidence in the safety of nuclear weapons stockpiles without full-scale nuclear testing.
But this discovery has massive implications for clean energy, too. In addition to the national security work, “we have taken the first tentative steps towards a clean energy source that could revolutionize the world,” Hruby said.
While this scientific breakthrough that is being celebrated at the highest levels of government, it will be many years before fusion power plants are likely to provide clean abundant energy.
“This is one igniting capsule, one time. And to realize commercial fusion energy, you have to do many things. You have to be able to produce many, many fusion ignition events per minute,” Kim Budil, the director of the Lawrence Livermore Lab, said on Tuesday.
“You have to have a robust system of drivers to enable that. So, you know, probably decades. Not six decades, I don’t think. Not five decades, which is what we used to say. I think it’s moving into the foreground and probably, with concerted effort and investment, a few decades of research on the underlying technologies could put us in a position to build a power plant.”
Omar A. Hurricane, Chief Scientist for the Inertial Confinement Fusion Program at Lawrence Livermore, explained, “What remains to be done from here is largely engineering, of increasing the laser energy efficiency and increasing the target energy gain with further target optimizations.”
Hurricane added, “This new result does indeed bring commercial fusion closer, as it demonstrates that there are no fundamental physics obstacles. It is starting to feel like we are entering the ‘Fusion Age.'”
One step forward in the ‘Fusion Age’
Interest in fusion has increased dramatically in recent years as concerns about climate change and energy security have become more acute.
More than 90 nuclear power reactors currently operate in the United States, but those nuclear reactors employ nuclear fission, which is when a neutron smashes into a larger atom, causing it to split into two smaller atoms and releasing a lot of energy. Nuclear fission reactions do not release any carbon dioxide emissions and therefore are considered clean energy, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
The United States got approximately 19 percent of its utility-scale electricity generation from those nuclear power plants in 2021, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and the energy from nuclear fission reactors represents half of the clean power generated in the United States, according to the Department of Energy.
However, those reactors generate long-lasting nuclear radioactive waste, and most countries, including the United States, currently have no long-term storage facilities for that waste. Efforts to build a permanent, underground geologic storage facility for nuclear waste have thus far been stymied in the United States.
Fusion happens when two atoms slam together to form a heavier atom, releasing huge amounts of energy without generating carbon dioxide emissions or long-lasting nuclear waste. But it’s proven extremely challenging to sustain a fusion reaction here on earth, and scientists have been trying for decades. In particular, it requires massive amounts of energy to generate fusion on reactions, and until this experiment, nobody had demonstrated the ability to get more energy out of the reaction than it takes to power it.
“Scientists have struggled to show that fusion can release more energy out than is put in since the 1950s,” plasma physicist Arthur Turrell told CNBC.
“During those decades, every time anyone has asked for funding for developing fusion power, the response has always been ‘first, you must show that it works in principle,'” said Turrell, who is also the author of The Star Builders. “That is, you must show that a fusion experiment can produce more energy than it uses. The researchers at Lawrence Livermore have done this for the first time ever.”
Fusion is already a hot space for climate and energy investors — so far, investors have poured almost $5 billion in investment into private fusion energy startups, according to the Fusion Industry Association, and more than half of that has been since since the second quarter of 2021.
“Everyone in the laser fusion (or inertial confinement fusion) community has been focused on getting to more energy out than in on a single experiment, because that is the key to showing the proof of principle and unlocking further investment and interest,” Turrell told CNBC.
Indeed, the private fusion industry is seeing this as a win.
“Now, the privately funded fusion industry will take the next steps, turning experimental results like this into a viable source of clean, safe energy,” Holland told CNBC. “In short, this will show the world that fusion is not science fiction: it will soon be a viable source of energy. Of course there are still many steps between these experimental results and fusion power plants, but this is an important milestone that brings us closer to the day when fusion will provide the world with clean, safe, and abundant energy.”
Tesla displays Optimus next to two of its vehicles at the World Robot Conference in Beijing on Aug. 22, 2024.
CNBC | Evelyn
Tesla’s vice president of Optimus robotics, Milan Kovac, said on Friday that he’s leaving the company.
In a post on X, Kovac thanked Tesla CEO Elon Musk and reminisced about his tenure, which began in 2016.
“I want to thank @elonmusk from the bottom of my heart for his trust and teachings over the decade we’ve worked together,” Kovac wrote. “Elon, you’ve taught me to discern signal from noise, hardcore resilience, and many fundamental principles of engineering. I am forever grateful. Tesla will win, I guarantee you that.”
Tesla is developing Optimus with the aim of someday selling it as a bipedal, intelligent robot capable of everything from factory work to babysitting.
In a first-quarter shareholder deck, Tesla said it was on target for “builds of Optimus on our Fremont pilot production line in 2025, with wider deployment of bots doing useful work across our factories.”
During Tesla’s 2024 annual shareholder meeting, Musk characterized himself as “pathologically optimistic,” then claimed the humanoid robots would lift the company’s market cap to $25 trillion at an unspecified future date.
In recent weeks, Musk told CNBC’s David Faber that Tesla is now training its Optimus systems to do “primitive tasks,” like picking up objects, open a door or throw a ball.
Competitors in the space include Boston Dynamics, Agility Robotics, Apptronik, 1X and Figure.
Kovac had previously served as the company’s director of Autopilot software engineering. He rose to lead the company’s Optimus unit as vice president in 2022.
Musk personally thanked Kovac for his “outstanding contributions” to the business.
Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment.
President Donald Trump holds a news conference with Elon Musk to mark the end of the Tesla CEO’s tenure as a special government employee overseeing the U.S. DOGE Service on Friday May 30, 2025 in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington.
Tom Brenner | The Washington Post | Getty Images
Tesla has been facing massive challenges trying to get back on track after a disastrous first quarter. Those headwinds strengthened considerably this week.
CEO Elon Musk officially concluded his term with the Trump administration at the end of May, hitting the 130-day mark, the maximum time allowed for a “special government employee.” On his way out the door, Musk expressed sharp criticism of the Trump’s signature spending bill that’s being debated in Congress due to its expected impact on the national debt.
What started off as a policy disagreement quickly escalated into an all-out online brawl, with Musk and President Donald Trump hurling insults at one other from their respective social media platforms. After Musk called the “one, big beautiful bill” an “abomination” and rallied his followers on X to “kill the bill,” Trump said Musk had gone “CRAZY” and threatened to end government contracts and cut off subsidies for Musk’s companies. Musk responded, “Go ahead, make my day.”
The rift sent Tesla shares plummeting 14% on Thursday, wiping out roughly $152 billion in value, the most for any day in the company’s 15 year-history on the public market. While Musk is still the richest person in the world on paper, his net worth plunged by $34 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.
More importantly, the spat brought about the collapse to a relationship that blended business, politics and power in a manner virtually unprecedented in U.S. history. The ramifications to Tesla, which fell out of the trillion-dollar club on Thursday, could be severe, and not just because Trump is reportedly considering selling or giving away the red Model S he purchased in March after turning the White House lawn into a Tesla showroom.
A senior White House official told NBC News on Friday that the president was “not interested” in having a call with Musk to resolve their feud.
Ire from the Trump administration could influence everything from future regulation, investigations and government support for Tesla, to decisions on tariff exemptions the company has been seeking in order to purchase Chinese-made manufacturing equipment.
Tesla shares were badly underperforming the broader market before the Musk-Trump breakup. Revenue slid 9% in the first quarter from a year earlier, with auto revenue plummeting 20%, due to the combination of increased competition from lower-cost EV makers in China and a consumer backlash to Trump’s political activities and rhetoric.
It’s certainly not what Tesla shareholders were expecting, when they sent the stock up about 30% in the days following Trump’s election victory in November. After spending close to $300 million to return Trump to the White House, Musk was poised to have a major role in the administration and be in position to push through regulatory changes in ways that benefited his companies.
Instead, his company has suffered, and Musk’s behavior is largely to blame.
One of his most divisive actions in leading the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was the dismantling of USAID, which previously delivered billions of dollars of food and medicine to more than 100 countries.
Beyond the U.S., Musk has endorsed Germany’s far-right extremist party AfD, and gave a gesture that many viewed as a Nazi salute at an inauguration rally.
In response, in recent months, there were numerous cases of vandalism or arson of Tesla facilities or vehicles in the U.S., as well as waves of peaceful protests at Tesla stores and service centers in North America and Europe.
Advertisements in protest of Musk have appeared in New York’s Times Square, and at bus shelters in London, urging people to boycott Tesla, some labeling the company’s EVs as “swasticars.” The Vancouver International Auto Show even removed Tesla from its exhibitors’ list fearing the company’s presence would cause safety problems.
On top all that are President Trump’s sweeping tariffs, which have led to concerns that costs will increase for parts and materials crucial for EV production. In its first-quarter earnings report in April, Tesla refrained from promising growth this year and said it will “revisit our 2025 guidance in our Q2 update.”
Board is mum
Pension funds that invest in Tesla have said the “crisis” at the company requires a leader to work a minimum of 40 hours per week to focus on solving its problems.
Public officials are echoing that sentiment, and calling on Tesla’s board to take action.
New York City Comptroller Brad Lander said on Thursday in s statement to CNBC that the “schoolyard fight” between Trump and Musk highlights how “Tesla’s weak accountability measures and poor governance threaten not only the company’s financial stability and shareholder value, but also the future of homegrown EV production.”
Brooke Lierman, comptroller of Maryland, told CNBC in an email that the company’s board “is not doing its job to ensure that there is a CEO at Tesla who is putting the company’s interests first.”
Since Musk’s name is synonymous with Tesla, the board needs to ensure that Tesla can stand on its own regardless of who’s leading the company, she added.
“Musk’s behavior continues to threaten the future of Tesla,” Lierman said. “As long as Tesla is identified with Elon Musk and he continues to be a polarizing figure, he will continue to damage the brand which is a huge part of Tesla’s value.”
Musk didn’t respond to a request for comment. CNBC also reached out for comment to board chair Robyn Denholm and directors and executives who work in government relations and in the office of the CEO. None of them responded as of the time of publication.
Elon Musk interviews on CNBC from the Tesla Headquarters in Texas.
CNBC
Tesla investors focused on business fundamentals are justified in their skepticism.
The company has failed to roll out innovative and affordable new model EVs, while Chinese competitors like BYD have flooded the market, particularly in Europe.
Analysts at Goldman Sachs on Thursday lowered their price target on Tesla mostly due to the outlook for 2025. Deliveries this quarter are tracking lower for the U.S., the analysts noted, while European sales saw a 50% year-over-year decline in April and another double-digit drop in May. China sales from those two months were down about 20% from a year earlier.
Quality is also a problem. Tesla has announced eight voluntary recalls of the Cybertruck in 15 months due to a range of issues including software bugs and sticking accelerator pedals.
Robotaxi ready?
Musk is urging investors to largely ignore the core business and look to the future, which he says is all about autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots.
But even there, Tesla is behind. In AVs the company has ceded ground to Alphabet’s Waymo, which is operating commercial robotaxi services in several U.S. markets. After a decade of missed deadlines, Musk has promised a small launch of a Tesla driverless ride-hailing service in Austin this month.
The Austin robotaxi service will operate in a geofenced area, Musk said in a recent interview with CNBC’s David Faber, and will begin with a small fleet of just 10 to 20 Model Y vehicles with Full Self-Driving (FSD) Unsupervised technology installed. If all goes well, Musk has said, Tesla will try to rapidly expand its driverless offerings to other markets like San Francisco and Los Angeles.
What consumers won’t be seeing anytime soon are the Cybercab and Robovan vehicles that Tesla touted at its “We, Robot” event last year to drum up customer and investor enthusiasm.
On Friday, Milan Kovac, Tesla’s vice president of Optimus robotics, announced he was leaving after joining the company in 2016. Musk thanked him for his “outstanding contribution” in a post on X.
Still, there are plenty Tesla bulls and Musk fanboys who are believers in the CEO’s vision. The stock’s 4% rebound on Friday is a sign that some saw an opportunity to buy the dip.
“I think the real story here is the investor base of Tesla literally doesn’t care about anything,” Josh Brown, CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management and CNBC PRO contributor, told CNBC’s “Halftime Report” Friday. “This is still a nothing matters stock.”
FundStrat’s Tom Lee said the Tesla selloff was “overdone.”
Tesla’s market cap, which is dramatically inflated relative to every other U.S. car maker, is built on Musk’s vision of Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robots doing factory work and babysitting our children, while self-driving Cybercabs and Robovans make money carting around passengers.
Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas wrote in a note this week that, “Tesla still holds so many valuable cards that are largely apolitical,” pointing to what he sees as the company’s “AI leadership, autonomy/robotics, manufacturing, supply chain re-architecture, renewable power, [and] critical infrastructure.”
In terms of Tesla’s existing business, the most immediate impact from what’s happening in Washington D.C., is the rollback of EV credits in the current budget bill that Musk loudly opposes and that’s struggling to find sufficient support in the Senate. There’s also the matter of the tariffs and whether Tesla is able to get preferred treatment, a proposition that seems increasingly unlikely with the Musk-Trump fallout.
Matthew LaBrot, a former Tesla staff program manager, told CNBC that he’s not surprised that Musk blew up his relationship with the president. LaBrot was terminated earlier this year after sending an open letter in protest of Musk’s divisive political activity.
“I am devastated for the country and the climate, though Elon only has himself to blame,” LaBrot said in an interview. “Back a loose canon, expect stray canon fire.”
Tesla investors can’t know at the moment how much of Musk’s energy and time will now return to his lone public company, and the business responsible for the vast majority of his wealth. Even without politics, he still has SpaceX, AI startup xAI and brain tech startup Neuralink, among other businesses.
As of Thursday, Musk still had a West Wing office that hadn’t been cleaned out, two administration officials told NBC News. The space will likely be packed up in the coming days, one of the officials said.
And while his time in the Trump camp may be over, Musk has called on his followers to form a new party in the U.S.
“Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?” he wrote on X on Thursday, in a post that’s now pinned at the top of his page. According to the post, 80% of 5.6 million respondents to the unofficial poll said “yes.”
Musk’s actions this week may have caused a permanent rift with the president. But one thing is clear — his company can’t get away from the White House.
The Docusign Inc. application for download in the Apple App Store on a smartphone arranged in Dobbs Ferry, New York, U.S., on Thursday, April 1, 2021.
Tiffany Hagler-Geard | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Shares of DocuSign tanked 18% in trading on Friday, a day after the e-signature provider reported stronger-than-expected earnings but slashed its full-year billings outlook.
Here’s how the company performed in the fiscal first quarter, compared with estimates from analysts polled by LSEG:
- Earnings per share: 90 cents, adjusted, vs. 81 cents expected
- Revenue: $764 million vs. $748 million expected
Billings, a closely-watched sales metric, came in at $739.6 million in the fiscal first quarter, which ended April 30. That was lower than the $746 million expected by analysts, according to StreetAccount. It also fell short of the company’s own forecast, which guided for billings between $741 million and $751 million.
For the current fiscal year, DocuSign said it expects billings of $3.28 billion to $3.34 billion, down from a range of $3.3 billion to $3.35 billion.
In the first quarter of DocuSign’s 2026 fiscal year, revenue jumped 8% year over year to $764 million. Subscription revenue increased 8% from the same period a year ago to $746.2 million.
DocuSign reported net income of $72.1 million, or 34 cents per share, compared to net income of $33.8 million, or 16 cents per share, a year earlier.
For the fiscal second quarter, the company expects revenue to be between $777 million and $781 million, compared to consensus estimates of $775 million, according to LSEG. For the full fiscal year, DocuSign projected revenue of $3.15 billion to $3.16 billion. Analysts were expecting $3.14 billion, according to LSEG.
The company also announced an additional $1 billion stock buyback, taking its share repurchase plan to $1.4 billion.
DocuSign shares are down more than 16% year to date.
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