Google and RWE Back German Nuclear Startup Proxima Fusion at €2.4 Billion Valuation German startup Proxima Fusion has raised €411 million ($469 million) from a range of investors, including national energy firm RWE AG and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, to develop a nuclear fusion plant it hopes will be operational in the 2030s. XTX Ventures, the investment arm from Alex Gerko’s algorithmic trading firm XTX Markets Ltd, led the financing round with London-based firm East X Ventures. The deal gives the three year-old energy firm a valuation of €2.4 billion, Proxima Fusion said on Tuesday. (Bloomberg)

A PhD student built a working nuclear fusion reactor in his garage, let an AI run it, and 400 thousand dollars later he works for Elon Musk. he posted it once. that single post ended with a grant in his account and a job offer from the most powerful man on earth. not a simulation. not a school project. an actual device that fuses atoms, sitting where his car used to be. fusion is the thing governments have been chasing for 70 years with billion dollar labs. the hard part was never the reactor itself. it was the control. the plasma inside has to be held at conditions hotter than the core of the sun, and it shifts and collapses in milliseconds. no human can react fast enough to keep it stable. so he stopped trying to do it himself. he handed the control loop to an AI. the model reads the sensor data hundreds of times a second, predicts how the plasma is about to move, and adjusts the magnetic fields before it ever drifts out of line. it does not wait for the plasma to misbehave. it sees it coming and corrects it before it happens. the same reaction-before-the-event speed no person could ever match. this is the exact kind of build people are tearing apart inside @NeuroClubAi. not to make reactors, but because the workflow is identical for anything hard. let the AI run the loop, predict the problem, fix it before it breaks. same playbook whether it is plasma or a business. then the post went out. within days Elon's fusion team reached out. they did not ask him to interview for an entry role. they handed him a 400 thousand dollar grant and pulled him onto the team building this at scale. one garage build turned a PhD student into an operator for the most ambitious man alive. here is the part that should stop you. he was one guy with a PhD, a garage, and an AI model doing the job that entire teams of physicists used to fail at. the AI was not assisting him. it was the operator. he built the hardware. the machine ran it. and that was enough to get noticed at the very top. most people think AI writes emails and makes pictures. meanwhile someone pointed it at one of the hardest physics problems on earth, held the plasma steady, and got paid by Elon Musk for it. the gap is not between humans and AI anymore. it is between the people who realize what this thing can already do and the people still using it to summarize their inbox.

⚡️Energy Brief⚡️ The UK Atomic Energy Authority launched a comprehensive strategy for nuclear fusion development and deployment. The strategy includes completing the detailed design phase of the UK's STEP fusion prototype power plant, a government-supported initiative to demonstrate fusion technology for commercial application. The strategy emphasizes expanding the UK fusion supply chain and increasing participation from UK fusion companies. This approach aims to build domestic industrial capacity and economic value creation around fusion energy commercialization. The comprehensive fusion strategy reflects governmental commitment to positioning the UK as a center for fusion innovation and manufacturing. By advancing both demonstration projects and supply chain development, the UKAEA's approach addresses both technical validation and economic development objectives in the emerging fusion energy sector. @UKAEAuthority Source: World Nuclear News

JUST IN: SAM ALTMAN'S BUSINESS DEALINGS ARE UNDER FEDERAL SCRUTINY AHEAD OF OPENAI'S IPO The House Oversight Committee launched a probe. Six GOP state AGs are asking the SEC to review. The specific deals in the spotlight: - Helion: Altman is a personal investor in the nuclear fusion firm. OpenAI was reportedly asked to back Helion, per WSJ. Altman recused himself from recent discussions. - Stoke Space: Altman invested through his family office. Last summer he reportedly asked the rocket-maker about partnering with OpenAI to build data centers in space. The scrutiny: - House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer sent a letter Friday requesting a briefing on potential conflicts of interest. - Six state AGs (Florida, Montana, Nebraska, Iowa, West Virginia, Louisiana) wrote to SEC Chairman Paul Atkins, asking for review ahead of the IPO. - The AGs flagged that Altman "has no direct equity in OpenAI," so "his personal financial interests have only limited alignment with OpenAI's financial performance." The IPO backdrop: - OpenAI is valued at roughly $850 billion in the private market. - The IPO is expected to be one of the largest ever. - The company is expected to quickly enter major indexes and ETFs post-listing. OpenAI board chairman Bret Taylor testified Monday that Altman had been "forthright" and "proactive and transparent" about his outside involvements.