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March 17, 2025

What Europe needs to win the nuclear fusion race

There is little doubt that fortunes will one day be made by those with deep enough pockets and sufficient vision — and patience

John Thornhill

4 min read

“We need fusion,” Sam Altman told delegates at Davos last year. Given the vast amounts of electricity consumed by the data centres that power the AI revolution, one can understand the demand. Predicting that the “two currencies of the future” would be compute/intelligence and energy, the OpenAI chief executive added: “There’s no way we get there without a breakthrough. It motivates us to go invest more in fusion.”

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John Thornhill

John Thornhill is Sifted’s founder and innovation editor of the Financial Times. He tweets from @johnthornhillft

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