This 34-year-old’s start-up backed by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos aims to make nearly unlimited clean energy

This 34-year-old’s start-up backed by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos aims to make nearly unlimited clean energy

After Brandon Sorbom graduated from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles in 2010, he decided to take the "couple of thousand dollars" he had saved and his credit card (he had 0% interest for a year) and fly to Boston. Sorbom wanted to get his Ph.D. in nuclear fusion but had been rejected from all five programs he applied to, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT had told Sorbom, who studied electrical engineering and engineering physics in undergrad, that he didn't have enough hands-on lab experience. So Sorbom headed there to try to get a job at the school's fusion energy lab.  It was "probably a really stupid strategy looking back," Sorborm says. "But I was 22 and I was like, 'Oh sure, I'll be able to make this work.'"

Why fusion?

At the heart of Commonwealth Fusion Systems is nuclear fusion. It is the process by which two atoms slam into each other and fuse into one heavier atom, generating energy. It's what powers the sun.Fusion has many upsides: First, it's clean. (Most energy used around the world is generated by burning carbon-based materials that release gasses into the atmosphere, warming the planet.)It is also a virtually unlimited resource. Other clean energies are