Keep pulling the thread on Scott Nolan.
The United States currently has no domestic commercial-scale capacity for enriching uranium for nuclear power plants.
Advanced nuclear reactor companies report that their biggest challenge is securing a reliable fuel supply, not navigating the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licensing process.
The specialized nuclear fuel required by many advanced reactor companies is produced exclusively by Russia.
The U.S. energy grid has experienced almost no growth in production capacity since the 1990s.
China's total energy production, which was equal to that of the U.S. in 2010, is projected to be triple the U.S. level in the current year.
At current growth rates, AI data centers could consume the entire U.S. electrical grid's capacity by 2030 if allowed to build without constraint.
A U.S. congressional ban on Russian uranium imports will take full effect on January 1, 2028, creating a supply cliff for domestic utilities.
Russia currently supplies approximately 25% of the enriched uranium imported by the United States.
The United States government previously operated under the assumption that space launch was a nation-state capability that would never be commercially viable and required perpetual subsidies.
In 2011, Scott Nolan's investment thesis at Founders Fund was that there was a significant, underappreciated opportunity in physical world and hardware companies, including biotech, computer chips, satellites, and infrastructure.
Industries that are stagnant, oligopolistic, and operate on a cost-plus contract basis are prime for disruption by new companies.
Peter Thiel's investment philosophy posits that a steep up-round in a venture-backed company often indicates that the company is still undervalued, as investors anchor to past valuations.