The Breakthrough Fusion Has Been Waiting For with Pacific Fusion

11 snips

Dec 9, 2025

Carrie von Muench, COO and co-founder of Pacific Fusion, discusses her journey from skepticism to driving innovation in fusion energy. She highlights recent breakthroughs, such as the National Ignition Facility's ignition, that shifted fusion from theory to a tangible engineering challenge. Carrie explains the unique financing model for fusion, details their modular pulsed-magnetic system, and outlines the ambitious goal of achieving net facility gain by 2030. She also shares insights on the strategic global race in fusion development and the significance of their New Mexico facility.

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ANECDOTE

Founding Team United After 2022 Breakthroughs

Founders came together in 2023 after 2022 breakthroughs convinced them fusion was an engineering problem.
Eric Lander, Will Regan, Keith, Leland, and Carrie formed the core team that launched Pacific Fusion.

ADVICE

Raise Milestone-Gated Capital Upfront

Assemble the capital needed for the full critical milestone path and gate funding to milestones.
Milestone-gated tranches reduce financing risk and align investors with execution.

INSIGHT

Pulsed Magnetic Drive Replaces Lasers

Pulsed magnetic (pulsar) inertial fusion drives targets with high-current magnetic compression instead of lasers.
That removes the laser intermediary and improves system-level efficiency compared with laser-driven ICF.

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Carrie von Muench is the COO and Co-Founder of Pacific Fusion, a company building the first pulser-driven inertial fusion system designed for net facility gain. Fusion has long promised limitless, carbon-free, dispatchable power, but only recently have breakthroughs—from ignition at the National Ignition Facility to major advances at Sandia and new high-efficiency pulse-power technology—shifted fusion from scientific aspiration to solvable engineering challenge.

The Pacific Fusion founding team came together after these 2022 milestones revealed a credible, engineering-driven path to fusion energy. Backed by a landmark $900M Series A led by General Catalyst, the company is developing a highly modular system that can be mass-manufactured using accessible materials and domestically sourced supply chains. In this episode, Carrie explains why these breakthroughs matter, how the modular pulser architecture works, why New Mexico became home for the world’s largest pulse-power facility, and how fusion could reshape global energy, industry, and security. MCJ is proud to participate in Pacific Fusion’s Series A through our venture funds.

Episode recorded on Nov 19, 2025 (Published on Dec 9, 2025)

In this episode, we cover:

[13:28] Pacific Fusion’s origins and founding team
[17:54] The company’s unique financing structure
[18:57] Why traditional venture models fail for fusion
[25:42] Pacific Fusion’s progress to date
[27:23] What a pulsed magnetic fusion system looks like
[29:15] The path from modular components to full-scale system
[33:20] Looking ahead at Pacific Fusion’s 2026 milestones
[35:04] Why they’re building in Albuquerque, New Mexico
[41:29] The global race with China to commercialize fusion
[46:24] The fusion supply chain

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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant