There's no shortage of tech podcasts, but few give you a true dose of the future.

The A16Z podcast is an exception.

It takes you straight to the innovators behind new materials, data centers, self-driving cars,

even electric boats, eavesdrop on the future with the A16Z podcast.

HBR presents.

Welcome to the exponential view podcast.

I'm your host, Azim Azar.

This week's guest works on one of the world's most exciting and fiendishly difficult technological problems.

Nuclear fusion.

The promise of fusion is well understood.

Harness the power of the stars to provide endless clean energy.

So, channeled fusion power could support our growing energy needs,

while maintaining and helping us achieve our sustainability goals.

Electricity demand may triple in the next 30 years,

and overall energy demand may follow a similar trajectory,

and all that while will need to decarbonize the energy system.

Fusion could be one part of the answer,

but it's also proven to be a really hard problem,

seemingly 20 to 30 years away from fruition.

Everything about fusion seems like science fiction.

Depending on the approach chosen,

a fusion engineer might need to control temperatures of up to hundreds of millions of degrees,

...