OUR Jeff Bezosits founder Amazon, Bill Gates its founder Microsoftmega-investor Peter Thiel and Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce Inc, and Sam Altman, the man behind the startup OpenAI that launched the controversial app. ChatGPTare among the ultra-rich founders and investors of tech giants who enthusiastically poured some of their mythical wealth into thermonuclear reaction. Cause her technologies, which, if and when it can be produced efficiently, will be able to offer unlimited, cheap and, above all, clean energy. In short, to solve her double problem global economy on the one hand, freeing it from any kind of energy dependence or inadequacy, and on the other hand, effectively counteracting the threat of climate change.

As noted in a related article in the Wall Street Journal, these innovative entrepreneurs hope to capitalize on the process that creates the sun and stars and produces infinite energy. Conventional nuclear reactors use the process of atomic fission to produce energy. Nuclear fusion is essentially the opposite process, as it compresses atoms, fusing them into something heavier. It produces no pollutants or toxic waste, which is why its ardent proponents argue that it is the energy of the future and that it will play a critical role in global efforts to fight climate change. After decades of painstaking effort, it is still doubtful whether the process by which stars are born can be applied to Earth. Experiments of this kind have been carried out since the 1950s at great cost and so far with insufficient results.

“It’s the holy grail, the mythical unicorn,” says Marc Benioff of Salesforce Inc., which has invested in MIT’s nuclear fusion program.

Now, however, the super-rich who have dominated our lives for the past few decades, flooding it with their technological advances, are betting that they are close to realizing a multi-year goal, which is nothing less than the efficient use of nuclear energy. thermonuclear reactors. “It’s the holy grail, it’s a mythical unicorn,” Mr. Benioff, who has invested in MIT’s Commonwealth Fusion Systems fusion power plant program, told a US newspaper. Bill Gates also invested in the same project and states that “there are no limits if you can make it work.” Sam Altman, who brought artificial intelligence to the average person a few months ago and at the same time sparked global concern about the use of ChatGPT, invested $375 million in startup Helion, perhaps the most daring bet of his career and even more futuristic. than artificial intelligence.

It’s an Everett, Washington-based company that uses magneto-inertial fusion technology and hopes to demonstrate it can produce clean electricity as early as next year.

He is also acting as a consultant to the said company’s scientific leadership team, using the controversial ChatGPT application in his research to see how they can speed up their work and get the results they want. Optimism is not limited to them. Researchers and executives from related companies, mostly in the US, Canada and Europe, have been working at a feverish pace since August 2021, when scientists at Livermore National Laboratory in California almost succeeded in generating a significant amount of energy, more than was sent to the laser experiment. Many thought they were on the cusp of a bigger step. And this national laboratory achieved it in December. Mr. Benioff claims he was converted by Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, who, as an investor, states that “financially, you either lose all your money right away, or you make a thousand times more money than you make.” invested.” And he adds that “this is a mathematical calculation of thermonuclear fusion.”

Mr. Khosla spent a year doing his own research before deciding to invest in private fusion companies. And now industrial companies, oil giants and sovereign wealth funds are backing fusion efforts with the US Department of Defense.

Research companies, scientific groups and fans of the project say they see parallels and parallels in their latest achievements in the field of fusion with the achievements of artificial intelligence, which, like fusion, requires huge computing power to implement the relevant models.