# A fusion startup is testing gold production from mercury

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/a-fusion-startup-is-testing-gold-production-from-mercury/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Alexander Wissner-Gross](https://realalpha.app/people/alexander-wissner-gross/) (Host) · Computer Scientist & Founder, Reified · Has backed and advised 40+ tech companies, directly and through 021T Capital and Reified; writes The Innermost Loop.
- Host: [Peter Diamandis](https://realalpha.app/people/peter-diamandis/) · Founder, XPRIZE · Co-founded Singularity University and founded Zero-G; co-wrote the books Abundance and Bold.
- Host: [Salim Ismail](https://realalpha.app/people/salim-ismail/) · Founder, Open ExO · Co-wrote Exponential Organizations; was Singularity University's founding executive director; sold Ångströ to Google.
- Host: [Dave Blundin](https://realalpha.app/people/dave-blundin/) · Founder & GP, Link Ventures · Has co-founded 23 companies; founding CEO of Vestmark and chairman of insurance marketplace EverQuote.
- Show: Moonshots
- Episode: [SpaceX’s AI Business Up 830%, OpenAI Agents Lie, and Startup Turns Mercury Into Gold | EP #305](https://realalpha.app/v/LeSIe50WfLI/), Oct 23, 2026
- Moment: 1:54:54 to 2:01:39 of the episode (7 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/a-fusion-startup-is-testing-gold-production-from-mercury/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/LeSIe50WfLI/?t=6894

## Quote

> “And I think we're starting to see the **dawn of femtotech**, the technology at the length scale of the atomic nucleus.”
> — [Alexander Wissner-Gross](https://realalpha.app/people/alexander-wissner-gross/) at [1:58:03](https://realalpha.app/v/LeSIe50WfLI/?t=7083) · Moonshots

## Takeaways

1. The proposed process uses neutrons to transmute mercury into gold.
2. The company estimates two tons of gold per year per gigawatt.
3. The panel says synthetic supply could challenge gold's scarcity premium.

## About this segment

Marathon Fusion says its reactor process can produce gold alongside energy, with a paper estimating two tons per year per gigawatt. The panel explores how technology could weaken gold's scarcity value.

From “SpaceX’s AI Business Up 830%, OpenAI Agents Lie, and Startup Turns Mercury Into Gold | EP #305”, Oct 23, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/LeSIe50WfLI/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[1:55:00](https://realalpha.app/v/LeSIe50WfLI/?t=6900) the rise of nanotechnology. Our final story here is a breaking story on the topic of fusion and alchemy. So for thousands of years, alchemists tried to turn ordinary metals into gold. A San Francisco startup says it's pulled it off. So Marathon Fusion posted, I think this morning or last night, quote, last month we demonstrated high rate alchemy turning mercury into real stable gold, beating CERN's record by a factor of 10. Here's the big idea. Line a reactor wall with mercury, and the plant makes clean energy and gold at the same time. Marathon's 2025 paper estimated about two tons of gold per year per gigawatt scale plant, potentially doubling the plant's revenue. All right, let's watch this video from Marathon. This is Nuclear Fusion.

[1:55:52](https://realalpha.app/v/LeSIe50WfLI/?t=6952) over the last four years we've been quietly building the foundational technologies for fusion in downtown san francisco and now we're bringing it all together in our first reactor which we're making available to our first partners in 2027 for medical isotope production and materials qualification first we melt lithium and evaporate it onto a solid plate this layer of lithium can be saturated with hydrogen isotopes used as a target then we ionize deuterium and accelerate those ions through an electric field into the target creating fusion using this simple architecture we can scale at an unprecedented rate doubling the fusion power density that we get every month over the next year.

[1:56:25](https://realalpha.app/v/LeSIe50WfLI/?t=6985) We chose this architecture because it works. In the 1980s, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Lab operated a similar reactor for over 25,000 hours at high fusion power density. Why revisit this? Because demand for radio pharmaceuticals has gone exponential, with the most successful treatments serving tens of thousands of patients per year. Our first generation of commercial reactors will transform fusion from an experiment to an industry, developing critical supply chains and allowing us to test the materials necessary for operation of fusion power plants.

[1:56:53](https://realalpha.app/v/LeSIe50WfLI/?t=7013) And that's just the start. Now we're going a step further, kicking off a revolution in scalable transmutation. Our recent experiments have shown production of rare medical isotopes, of tritium to power fusion reactors, and even validated our scalable pathway for co-production of electricity and gold. I love this. We've got fusion reactors in downtown San Francisco. You're walking by them and you don't even know.

[1:57:16](https://realalpha.app/v/LeSIe50WfLI/?t=7036) Transmutation is here. Making gold. I mean, we talk arguably on this pod, we don't talk enough about nanotech. We certainly don't talk enough about femtotech, which is what this really is. So this is a startup that uses a neutron neutron process. us to take Mercury 198, bombard it with neutrons. The neutrons that it's being bombarded with interact with the neutrons in the nuclei of Mercury, and some of those Mercury atoms and their nuclei get transmuted into gold nuclei. And this is the process, to answer the question Peter from earlier, most of the gold on Earth, it is currently thought, originates from neutron stars and collisions between neutron stars. Neutrons interacting with each other turn out to be, it's not terribly high yield, but it turns out to be a way to produce gold. And I think we're

[1:58:11](https://realalpha.app/v/LeSIe50WfLI/?t=7091) starting to see the dawn of femtotech, the technology at the length scale of the atomic nucleus. And I will say, I'm delighted to see progress and delighted to see industrial interest in call it alchemy, call it transmutation tech, because every time there's always like from time to time, I'll speak at a family office event and there's always a gold bug in the audience somewhere. Always someone pumping gold as an asset under the premise, the world is ending.

[1:58:39](https://realalpha.app/v/LeSIe50WfLI/?t=7119) And so therefore you should reallocate all of your assets to gold or Salim, digital gold. And I think non-investment advice, they're always wrong. The world is not going to hell in a hand basket. And gold, although it's useful for certain production, the premise that gold is permanently scarce and therefore is a great long-term store of value, I would love to see either this company or some other company or an entire industry, just like the diamond industry in De Beers was driven to the edge of bankruptcy by synthetic diamonds. I would love to see a transmutation industry drive all these gold bugs off the cliff through transmutation of mercury and other elements and make gold too cheap to meter this is the abundance thesis writ large you know technology turns whatever was scarce into abundance over and over again we have the

[1:59:34](https://realalpha.app/v/LeSIe50WfLI/?t=7174) technology aluminums peter you have to tell the aluminum story yeah well i mean aluminum was the most precious metal on the planet uh for most all of existence and there was a very famous story uh where the uh uh it was plenty the elder yeah well before you know other than that oh the king of the king of sam was invited over for a royal dinner and that's right yeah at napoleon at Napoleon's, you know, dinner, and everybody was fed with gold utensils other than the King of Siam who was fed with aluminum utensils. And in fact, the capstone of the Washington Monument is made of aluminum because it was the rarest element at that time. And of course, we now have aluminum smelters and we turned aluminum from the scarcest metal to something that we throw away with our, you know, lunch sandwiches with aluminum foil. Tin foil is now aluminum foil. We have so

[2:00:30](https://realalpha.app/v/LeSIe50WfLI/?t=7230) much of it yeah it's it's crazy it's like whatever you think is scarce give it a second you know technology transforms scarcity into abundance over and over again everywhere intelligence was the most scarce thing on the planet yeah yeah gold bugs are cooked um what a key point here is before everybody freaks out and sells all their gold uh the cost of doing this will will It'll first affect fusion and the ability to make energy abundant before it really affects gold supply.

[2:01:03](https://realalpha.app/v/LeSIe50WfLI/?t=7263) Just to give everybody a lot of confidence around this. If it doubles the profitability of that power, two and a half tons of gold is a lot. But I think the alchemy story, the popular idea here of gold being the most scarce thing, and therefore there's a premium to that, that's the part that is cooked. And I think that is fantastic. And I'm so with Alex on this one. All right. Drive the cost of gold to zero. Seriously, it is just like Bitcoin, I would argue. It is largely a waste of capital.