More on LENR and Fusion from Fortune Magazine

After publishing an interview with Cherokee/Industrial Heat head Tom Darden, Fortune magazine has written another article about fusion as an energy source. The article is titled “Why Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, and others are betting on fusion”, and the focus of the article is about private sector investment into nuclear fusion projects, and explains how many wealthy business leaders are putting their own funds into companies who are working in the field. This article is also by Brian Dumaine, who did the interview with Tom Darden which was published yesterday.

Here’s an excerpt:

“America has six private-sector fusion projects underway, according to a new report by the research firm Third Way. PayPal co-founder and Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel has backed Helion Energy of Redmond, Wash.  Microsoft MSFT -0.59% co-founder Paul Allen has put money behind Tri ­Alpha Energy in Irvine, Calif., which has reportedly raised $140 million. And Bezos Expeditions, the investment fund of Amazon AMZN -3.63% CEO Jeff Bezos, is backing a Vancouver company called General Fusion, which so far has raised $94 million.”

The main thrust of the article is that private sector efforts are often more successful than government programs, and that more private investment in fusion might move the field along faster. The article mainly focuses on hot fusion projects, but there’s a paragraph about LENR which states:

“More recently scientists have been making some progress on a variation of this technology called low-energy nuclear reaction. That has led investors like Tom Darden, CEO of the $2.2 billion Cherokee Investment Partners, to create a North Carolina startup named Industrial Heat, which licensed the technology of Italian scientist Andrea Rossi. Last year Bill Gates visited the cold-­fusion facilities of the Italian national technology agency ENEA, but he has not invested, according to his office.”

Two articles in two days from Fortune covering LENR is quite a change from what we have seen in the media lately. Fortune is certainly a mainstream business magazine, which is widely read in business circles around the world, and it could mean that more serious attention will be paid to LENR in the business community.