Marathon Fusion comes out of stealth promising commercial fusion next year — and plans to make gold as a stepping stone

Speaker 1: There they are.

Speaker 2: At the bottom of it. Welcome to show, guys.

Speaker 1: What's up, guys?

Speaker 7: Hey. What's going on? Great seeing you.

Speaker 2: Can you both introduce yourselves and then take us through the company a little bit?

Speaker 1: Yeah. Because you guys both look like you might be named Kyle Schiller. So you're gonna have to confirm who you do. One's Adam. Okay.

Speaker 5: Yeah. I'm the CEO of the company. I'm Kyle. My co founder Adam can join us today. Here's Jason, our Chief Science Officer.

Speaker 2: Oh, cool. Great. So take us through the pitch for the company. I saw the launch video went very viral. Lots of debate about it. But what's the core thesis here? What's the core technology?

Speaker 5: The core thesis is that fusion is really bottlenecked on the foundational capabilities and technologies much more so than on the core plasma physics. And so we got founded to address a very specific set of problems around the tritium fuel cycle. We've since expanded. We've now gone full stack, built out the industrial base, and we're ready to deploy commercial fusion next year.

Speaker 2: And fusion in general has been one of those technologies that's been ten years away for the last Yeah. Fifty But it does feel like we've seen some solid progress. What technology milestones have actually been knocked down that gave you the confidence to go out and build this company, raise money for it and start like actually accelerating?

Speaker 5: You know, in in 2022, it was very much a story about tailwinds. And now, four years later, we can confidently say it's a story about technology and those milestones. Sure. And, you know, this ten year thing bothers me so much that we have gone out and made this very public commitment

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 5: To double our power density every single month.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 5: We're now talking about the execution window that is like news cycle relevant, that is Twitter relevant, and most importantly, where people can feel like they are a part of the story, that they're actually watching us progress. They don't just have to take our word for it and be like, another billion dollars, bro. This is actually going to happen.

Speaker 2: Yes. So doubling every month, incredibly powerful. We all know the power of exponential growth. But if you're 20 ooms away from where you need to be, this could still take a long time. How far Yeah. Away are you from from actually reaching... What what do they call it? Q greater than one? Isn't that the Yep. Phrase for these things?

Speaker 5: Yeah. Well, I I love that you have this perspective because nuclear physics is a matter of many many ooms. Yes. Is largely counterintuitive.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 5: So on power density, we are away, like, five five ohms maybe now from setting the record. And on GAIN, historical reactors have gotten to within a factor of two. Yeah. So that's why I say that is the area on which we are much closer to commercial performance. Yes. We're actually going to save that for last. Yes.

Speaker 4: It's the

Speaker 5: most capital intensive thing. It's the most scientifically intensive thing. It's not the only important thing. So let's, like, catch up on the rest of the industrial base. Yeah. And then once we're there, we can do confinement.

Speaker 2: And take us through the gold piece of this story. Like why was that relevant? Why is that... Is that just because it's so tangible to the audience that anyone can understand that? We will

Speaker 1: perform it and now we will perform a trick.

Speaker 2: Yeah. It's alchemy. But but is this actually part of the business plan or is this just like a really tangible scientific milestone?

Speaker 1: That's how they're going to finance, you

Speaker 7: know, Yeah. Rest Like the eighteen months ago, Marathon announced this seemingly crazy thing that is real that, you know, fusion can co produce electricity and gold at scale. And this is, you know, at the power plant scale, this is how we're gonna make fusion energy the most cost competitive. And this was just the beginning. Basically, right now, we're focusing on making materials that are the most valuable materials in the world, like billions of times more valuable than gold. And so we're basically producing the roadmap for fusion energy. Instead of just making electricity ten years away, we're gonna be making medical radioisotopes right now with these very high power density reactors.

Speaker 1: Mhmm. What kind of pushback did you guys get on on the launch or or the video? And, like, how would you, you know, respond to some of the more common pushback?

Speaker 5: I I was pretty amazed how positive the reception was, to be quite honest with you. I think the vibes have gone really, really positive. I think we nailed the timing and the tone in the launch. And where we have seen pushback is mostly on these issues, like mercury materials compatibility that are just nonissue. Like, mercury is corrosive to copper. It's a good thing that there's no copper in Europe for 97. Okay. It's also a good thing that we have been operating with copper, like, in the nuclear industry for almost a hundred years. So in the nineteen forties, mercury was used as a coolant in nuclear reactors. Throughout the nineteen hundreds, it was used in, like, ACDC conversion systems that powered most of the London underground. GE has deployed mercury turbines. Even the super conservative European programs baselined. Like, their their default is mercury fusion power plants.

Speaker 2: Sure.

Speaker 5: And so what we're proposing is, like, radical from an economic perspective. The materials actually don't concern me that much. We'll have to do a lot more qualification from here on out. We address that in the video. But it is it is tractable. It is like a really highly tractable series of engineering problems.

Speaker 2: Okay. So that's the that's the scientific pushback. The... For the person that was just like scrolling by and saying Yeah. Oh, they're making infinite gold. The critique was like you're not producing gold economically yet because you have to put more energy into the system. That has cost and so That's right. Even if you're able and and but that is something that you've already addressed that you will be solving by scaling up the efficiency of the system.

Speaker 5: Yeah. Mean, it's true. We're really far away. That's why we

Speaker 2: have So to go so you probably spent like thousands of dollars to make like 1p of gold or something like that at this point. But then you double that and double that

Speaker 1: and Yeah. Cut You

Speaker 5: Yeah. Are always comments that are like, but but they would have to do a million times better. And it's like, yeah, man. That's that's a good Yeah.

Speaker 2: That's the goal. Just give us Yeah. You know, 40 doublings or something.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Say that about the models. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2: You should be very inured to this concept

Speaker 1: of You need to be oomaxing.

Speaker 2: Yeah. That's right. That's right. What is... What's the actual lab look like? You don't need to use any radioactive material. Right? So it's like a pretty safe lab to just walk around?

Speaker 5: We do operate this currently in Downtown San Francisco.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 5: And we generate a very tiny number of x rays which we're able to shield with lead much like you get at the doctor's office.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 5: So we've already each patient safety officer. We take diagnostics. Okay. We make sure that everyone's operating safely.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 5: We will, at some point, have to upgrade from here. And Oh, much like the vision companies that set criticality in Idaho, we have a number of other facilities where we can go and do that next phase of scale up.

Speaker 1: Oh. And how big how big is the team?

Speaker 5: We're 30 people right now.

Speaker 1: Wow. Very cool.

Speaker 2: Well, congratulations. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Thanks for sharing, guys.

Speaker 2: Breaking it down. We appreciate you. Come back on We'll talk

Speaker 1: to for the next on the next Zoom.

Speaker 2: Yeah. The next Zoom.

Speaker 4: That's right.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Alright. It looks good to meet you guys.

Speaker 2: Goodbye. Cheers. Let me tell you about the New York Stock Exchange. Wanna change the world? Raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange.