Valerie Gardner, founder and managing partner of Nucleation Capital, and Dr. Rachel Slaybaugh, a partner at DCVC, presented remarks on the topic of "Procuring Investments for Commercialization" in the concluding session of ARPA-E's Fission Summit covering Technology to Market, held in Hollywood, California, April 18-20, 2023.
This was the 2023 Annual Fission Program Review Meeting being held as a showcase of all of the groups funded by ARPA-E for cutting edge research and development of new fission technologies and materials.
Day 1 of the program covered the CURIE and OnWARDS Programs provided an opportunity for the grantees to do project "lightening talks," and covered topics including NRC Engagement, Technology-to-Market preparedness, Industry Perspectives on Reprocessing and Legal Considerations. There were also presentations from TerraPower, GE Global Research, the IDNL, Deep Isolation, Brigham Young University and Citrine Informatics.
Day 2 of the program covered Processing Technologies, Advanced Reactor Waste Disposal, Materials, Microreactors and Enabling Technologies. In addition to remarks from Jon Carmack, Danny Cunningham,, Jenifer Shafer adn Bob Ledoux, there were a range of panels that included speakers from Dow Chemical, EPRI, Southern Company and Westinghouse. The CURIE, ONWARDS, GEMINA, MEITNER AND OPEN Program grantees also gave more lightening talks.
On the third and final day of the event, the discussion shifted to commercialization and raising capital. After Danny Cunningham of ARPA-E gave a quick overview of "How to Commercialize an Idea, John Bistline of EPRI covered a view of the Energy Market in Transition. Following this, Valerie and Rachel discussed how ventures procure investments from venture capital. They presented an overview of how venture capital works and the range of financing prospects that young companies could expect. In a final hat tip to innovation, Valerie described how innovation in the finance and venture fields was enabling a range of non-traditional funds to enter the market with missions to fund high-risk innovation technologies such as advanced nuclear. To view Valerie's slides for the presentation, click the image below.
Learn more about ARPA-E's Funding Programs, please see this link.
