presented by Dot Tech Domains, where tech founders find sharp memorable names for their tech startups. Hello and welcome back to Equity TechCrunch's flagship podcast about the business of startups. I'm Rebecca Balan, and this is the episode where we bring on industry experts to help us explore a trend in the tech world and dive deep. Today I'm going to have a little help from my friend TechCrunch senior reporter, Tim DeShon. Hey, Tim, how's it going?

Good, Rebecca. How are you doing? Yeah, I'm doing really good. I hear you just got back from Fusion Fest in London. Fusion Fest, yep. Great timing. Second of them got back late Wednesday night. It was good. It was pretty interesting. Yeah, the vibe. How is it? Are we still investing in climate?

So far so good. This one was just on Fusion, which I'd say the vibe there was positive, but maybe pensive, if that makes sense. I think they were all thinking everybody wants power yesterday, but they still have a few more years to go in terms of fusion power. Okay. Well, I mean, it feeds into the broader energy climate conversation. And from what I've read in your reporting and from what I've heard from you, climate tech is actually doing pretty well. You know, sightline climate, which tracks investment in the space. They said venture and growth investment topped $40 billion last year, which is not quite as big as the 2021 heyday, but I think it's a lot better than people who are expecting giving the mood in Washington. And energy has a lot to do with that. Today we're joined by Rachel Slaiba,

general partner at DCVC, where she focuses on climate sustainability and energy investments.

Rachel, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me. Excited to be here. Yeah, I'm really excited to get into the weeds with you, but probably not as excited as Tim is. It's true. Yeah, I'm curious, Tim, how did you two meet and how do you know each other? Did you work on any stories together? I don't think any stories exactly. We kind of run in the same circles, the climate tech and energy circles. I think we met at a breakthrough energy event in London a couple years ago.

Yeah, that's right.

Curious timing, just getting back from London. Yeah. Yeah. So why are we talking about fusion now? What's changed, right?

Fusion has been like 30 years away for forever. So what's changing? Yeah. And Rachel, feel free to jump in here.

I think a few things have changed. The biggest thing was in 2024 at the end of the year, the National Ignition

Facility at the Lawrence...

Lawrence Livermore National Lab.

Lawrence Livermore National Lab, they created or they ran the first experiment that generated more energy from a controlled fusion reaction than was required to ignite it.

It's a very specific scientific definition,

but it was the first time it happened,

and it suggested that if we can do this in other contexts,

we might be able to transition from kind of a big physics science experiment

into something that's more engineering driven

so that eventually we get on the road to a fusion power plant.

That has really accelerated interest in fusion

and really like many things that all of a sudden,

it looks like there's a bunch of interest,

it's been built on top of things that have been growing over time.

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