Welcome, humans.

AI data centers are going to double their power consumption by 2030. So where's all that energy coming from?

One answer a lot of very smart people are betting (hundreds of millions, if not billions) on: fusion. That’s the same process that powers the sun. If it works, it's basically unlimited clean energy. Using fuel extracted from seawater, it’s carbon-free energy with no meltdown risk.

The catch? It's been "30 years away" for decades.

But something changed. A new type of superconducting magnet lets you build reactors 50x smaller than before. And now Google DeepMind is helping control 100-million-degree plasma, and NVIDIA is helping simulate entire reactors.

These companies are putting their money where their mouth is, too. Google already signed a deal to buy the electricity.

The company making it happen is Commonwealth Fusion Systems. The man explaining it all is Brandon Sorbom, their co-founder and Chief Science Officer.

In our latest podcast episode, he breaks down how AI and fusion are building each other… and why that old "30 years away" joke might finally be dead.

Here's a few of our favorite parts:

• (3:31) "Fusion is the process that powers the sun, the stars... we have an existence proof, which is the universe."

• (6:07) The simplest way to think about it: "Fusion is like making a sun, but you control the switch."

• (10:28) Why fusion progress actually outpaced Moore's Law—and nobody noticed.

• (25:33) Why fusion can't melt down: "Fission is default on. Fusion is default off."

• (32:20) How Google DeepMind and NVIDIA are accelerating the work.

• (36:00) "The AI is really taking on the heavy lifting here."

• (41:14) The flywheel: "We're using AI tools to build something that may eventually provide power to a data center."

• (50:42) "There is no existing fusion industry. So we have to build it ourselves."

Why watch this? Because fusion is one of those technologies where, if it works, it changes everything… and (43:34) Brandon lays out the actual timeline: magnets done 2026, first plasma 2027, grid power in the early 2030s (Brandon heavily caveats that these are estimate, but he’s got a need for speed, so… fingers crossed!).

Watch and/or Listen now: YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts

P.S. When we asked Brandon what keeps him up at night, his answer wasn't the physics. It's coordinating 10,000 unique parts. The science risk is retired. Now it's pure execution.

If you’re as into fusion as we are, you’re in luck: We wrote a full-on blog recapping our chat AND the AMA that Brandon did. You can read it all here.

AI helping build fusion which will power AI… man, if you’re into the idea of a world of abundance, this is the most important flywheel in tech right now (maybe second to AI that can make chips to make better chips… but where are you going to get the power?? Elon thinks solar panels in space, but here on Earth? It could very well be fusion).

Dive deeper with these resources:

• Building Trust in Fusion Energy — the blog post Brandon talks about

• Google DeepMind's TORAX announcement

• Brandon's Reddit AMA — dozens of detailed technical answers to more questions

• Commonwealth Fusion Systems — the company’s bllog

• TORAX on GitHub — the open-source plasma simulator

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LATER THIS WEEK: He Taught 1 Million People to Code. Here's How He'd Start Over in 2026.

🔴 LIVE Thursday at 10:30 AM PT | 12:30pm CT | 1:30pm ET | 6:30 PM GMT: 

Ryan Carson taught over 1,000,000 people how to code at Treehouse—and spent 25% of his entire life doing it. Now that coding agents are here, and not just here, but good, does everything about that process need to change?

In this livestream, Ryan joins us to share his thoughts on how we need to rethink programming education from scratch. When AI agents can write production code, pass competitive coding challenges, and ship features while you sleep… what do YOU actually need to know? And like, can we learn it ASAP plz? Help us Ryan!

Naval Ravikant just said software engineers are "among the most leveraged people on earth"; but only because they understand what's happening under the hood.

So what DO you need to understand under the hood? What are the absolute fundamentals to focus on if you’re not the one writing the code yourself?

We're digging into what that means for beginners, career switchers, and anyone building with AI. Click below to get notified when we go live:

YouTube | LinkedIn | X

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT…

Four recent interviews you’ll definitely want to check out (pick whatever looks interesting to you and dive in!):

• Google's Secret Coding Tool Just Went Free (Gemini CLI Deep Dive) — A Google engineer details how their team ships 100-150 features weekly using AI. | Spotify | Apple

• The $0.25-Per-Million-Tokens AI Model That Feels Like Magic — Diffusion changed image generation. Now it's being applied to language—and it might make LLMs 10x faster. | Spotify | Apple

• Can AI Improve Customer Service Without Killing Jobs? — The founder of Crescendo (ex-Zendesk) on why AI + humans outperform automation alone. | Spotify | Apple

• Can AI Actually Be Your Therapist? — We ask the CEO of Slingshot AI ($93M raised) what it takes to build AI for mental health from the ground up.

More on that last one: Last week, we talked to Daniel Reid Cahn, CEO of Slingshot AI, about Ash—the first AI app purpose-built for therapeutic support. His team spent 18 months building a foundation model for psychology trained on real therapeutic conversations. They've raised $93M from a16z and others. Here's what stood out:

• (9:06) Two years ago, people thought AI therapy was crazy. Now Harvard Business School says it's the #1 use case for AI.

• (14:30) A woman in a domestic abuse situation used Ash to talk through resources and escape. "You saved my life."

• (24:05) The key difference from ChatGPT: "We want to change people's minds. OpenAI doesn't."

• (29:45) Research from NYU: after 10 weeks, Ash users have one more friend on average. They leave their house more. They feel more hopeful.

Try it: talktoash.com

And if you haven’t subscribed yet, please do! Click the image below to go to our channel and hit “subscribe” to get notified right when new videos go live.

We have a goal to hit 50K subscribers by the end of the year (if not 100K), and we’re closing in on 20K subs and counting! If you like learning about AI, and already watch some of our videos, do us a favor and click here to subscribe today.

Stay curious,

The Neuron Team

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