OpenAI raised money recently at a valuation of $100 billion whereas the last time Commonwealth Fusion raised money it did so at a valuation of “$7.2—10.8b (Dealroom.co estimates Dec 2021)”. Also, OpenAI is only one of dozens of well-funded organizations in the space.
OpenAI has to face off against giants like Google and Facebook, as well as other startups like Anthropic. There are dozens of other organizations in this space, although most are not as competitive as these.
Commonwealth Fusion has to face off against giants like ITER (funding maybe $22B, maybe $65B, estimates vary) and the China National Nuclear Corporation (building CFETR at ?? cost, while a much smaller experiment in China cost ~$1B), as well as other startups like Helion. The Fusion Industry Association has 37 members, which are all private companies trying to get fusion.
There’s probably currently more private investment in AI, and more public investment in fusion. Many of the investments are not publicly available, so a direct comparison between the entire fields is difficult. I choose to focus on two startups with available data that seem to be leading in their respective fields.
I thought about including valuation in the table as well, but decided against it:
I’m not sure how accurate startup valuations are. It make be less clear how to interpret what the funding received means, but the number is easier to measure accurately.
These are young companies, so the timing of the valuation matters a lot. OpenAI’s valuation is recent, or 8 years after the company was founded. Commonwealth Fusion’s valuation is from 2 years ago, or 4 years after the company was founded. If each had multiple valuations, then I would have made a graph like Figure 1 for this.
OpenAI raised money recently at a valuation of $100 billion whereas the last time Commonwealth Fusion raised money it did so at a valuation of “$7.2—10.8b (Dealroom.co estimates Dec 2021)”. Also, OpenAI is only one of dozens of well-funded organizations in the space.
Source of the latter fact: https://app.dealroom.co/companies/commonwealth_fusion_systems
OpenAI has to face off against giants like Google and Facebook, as well as other startups like Anthropic. There are dozens of other organizations in this space, although most are not as competitive as these.
Commonwealth Fusion has to face off against giants like ITER (funding maybe $22B, maybe $65B, estimates vary) and the China National Nuclear Corporation (building CFETR at ?? cost, while a much smaller experiment in China cost ~$1B), as well as other startups like Helion. The Fusion Industry Association has 37 members, which are all private companies trying to get fusion.
There’s probably currently more private investment in AI, and more public investment in fusion. Many of the investments are not publicly available, so a direct comparison between the entire fields is difficult. I choose to focus on two startups with available data that seem to be leading in their respective fields.
I thought about including valuation in the table as well, but decided against it:
I’m not sure how accurate startup valuations are. It make be less clear how to interpret what the funding received means, but the number is easier to measure accurately.
These are young companies, so the timing of the valuation matters a lot. OpenAI’s valuation is recent, or 8 years after the company was founded. Commonwealth Fusion’s valuation is from 2 years ago, or 4 years after the company was founded. If each had multiple valuations, then I would have made a graph like Figure 1 for this.