Fusion energy is transitioning from scientific proof to industrial execution. This course equips a broad, non-technical audience across MIT and beyond with the context needed to understand fusion’s unique economic, strategic, and investment challenges as a potential clean-energy technology.
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The Business of Fusion Energy
Fusion energy is transitioning from scientific proof to industrial execution. This course equips a broad, non-technical audience across MIT and beyond with the context needed to understand fusion’s unique economic, strategic, and investment challenges as a potential clean-energy technology.
Dates and Times:
Jan 15, 20, & 26:
Sessions at 10:00–11:30, 12:30–2:00, and 2:30–4:00 ET.
Location:
Jan 15 & 20: 24-121
Jan 26: 2-105
Lecturers
Sergei Kniazev, MIT Sloan Fellow (MBA)
Doug Sutcliffe, MIT MS Management of Technology
Layla Araiinejad, MIT MS Technology and Policy
Guest Speakers (To be Announced)
Learning Goals
By the end of the course, participants will be able to: understand the basic science and engineering behind the different fusion approaches; identify the major players in the fusion industry and their business models; position fusion within the global clean-energy landscape; understand the key cost, scale, and timeline challenges that shape fusion’s path from first-of-a-kind systems to broader deployment; and identify the main strategic risks facing industry, including financing, supply chain and regulation.
Session 1 (1.5h): What is Fusion and How Does it Fit in the Energy Landscape?
This session provides a high-level introduction to the key concepts of fusion science and engineering, focusing on their implications on fusion’s potential and role in the global energy landscape. Participants examine what can make an energy system industrially relevant - reliability, scale, lifetime, safety, and integration with the grid and how fusion compares to fission, renewables, and gas across these dimensions. The discussion clarifies who the true customers, investors, and decision-makers are in the fusion ecosystem at the current moment, and introduces the critical distinction between technical milestones and commercial readiness, highlighting where non-physics risks begin to dominate outcomes.
Session 2 (1.5h): Business Models, techno-economics, and the Capital Gap
The second session focuses on how fusion companies can progress from laboratory success to bankable projects. Participants explore emerging fusion business models, including vertically integrated developers, licensors, and subsystem providers, and how each allocates technical, financial, and regulatory risk. Using a simplified techno-economic lens, the session explains the cost drivers that matter most, why uncertainty remains high, and how FOAK plants differ fundamentally from mature deployments. The discussion concludes with an examination of the evolution of fusion’s investor’s profile and the structural reasons many efforts stall in the so-called valley of death.
Session 3 (1.5h): Scaling Constraints and Opportunities Pathways
The final session examines several critical determinants of fusion’s ability to scale. Participants analyze non-physics constraints such as single-source dependencies, critical materials, workforce shortages, and geopolitical exposure. The session then compares regulatory approaches, public funding models, and industrial policy across regions, illustrating why fusion commercialization is likely to look very different by geography.
Designed for: MIT students, researchers, investors, policymakers, and industry partners.
No prior fusion physics background required.
