Christine King, an integral member of the Nucleation Capital fund development team, was selected to serve as the director of the Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) initiative, effective February 17, 2020. As director, Ms. King will lead efforts on behalf of the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Nuclear Energy to provide the nuclear community with access to the technical, regulatory and financial support necessary to move innovative nuclear energy technologies toward commercialization. We will miss her but we congratulate Christine and wish her extremely well in her exciting new role.
The Nucleation Capital fund development team was organized and launched by Valerie Gardner in early 2018 as an initiative of Tiemann Investment Advisors LLC, a Menlo Park-based investment advisory group, after identifying the growth prospects for private ventures developing advanced nuclear technologies. Valerie first connected with Rod Adams, founder of Atomic Insights, in March of 2018 after he published a blog post titled "Advanced nuclear energy systems are ready for investors who seek ground floor opportunities," in late February, 2018. Valerie and Rod's first legendary conversation lasted almost four hours. They agreed to work together and set about methodically growing the team and assessing structural options for "developing mechanisms for investors with moderate resources and long time horizons to focus part of their portfolio in this potentially high payoff field."
The group, initially operating in stealth as the Einstein Energy Fund, grew to include Valerie Gardner, Rod Adams, Dr. Leslie Dewan, Rick DeGolia, Christine King, William Lewis, Carl Page and Dr. Jonathan Tiemann. They recognized that there was a gap in the availability of funds investing in next-generation nuclear power and other critical climate solutions including carbon capture, utilization and sequestration (CCUS) but a surplus of funds investing in wind, solar, geothermal, energy efficiency and other types of "renewable energy." In early 2019, the team renamed itself Nucleation Capital and began outreach on its pronuclear thesis to institutional LPs. Unfortunately, while there were a handful of foundations and endowments intrigued enough to meet, there were no institutions willing to anchor the fund. By the end of 2019, the team had not found a pathway for launching a viable fund and things slowly began to deconstruct.
First, Christine King accepted her position with the DOE at GAIN. Soon after, Covid-19 hit and Bill Lewis opted to devote his time to addressing Covid and saving lives. Soon after, Rick DeGolia, who had been elected mayor, became too busy to meet. The team was forced to minimize in-person meetings and progress quickly stalled, as Dr. Dewan and Carl Page opted to prioritize other commitments. For most of 2020, it appeared that there was no viable structure for raising capital to deploy into advanced nuclear, as the only investor interest was coming from accredited investors, rather than institutions. It wasn't until the 4th quarter of 2020, that Rod and Valerie discovered the Angellist rolling fund structure, which enabled them to raise smaller dollar amounts from greater numbers of accredited investors cost-effectively, and invest what they raised each quarter. They signed an LOI to float their fund on the Angellist platform and began raising capital. Nucleation Capital closed its first investment into Core Power in Q3-2021. The fund has continued to raise and deploy capital each quarter since.
Read more in the INL Press Release: "Christine King named director of Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear."