Latest / Best of Business / Ratu Mataira: OpenStar CEO on the company getting the funding for a new research facility

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Ratu Mataira: OpenStar CEO on the company getting the funding for a new research facility · Best of Business

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  Speaker 2: The government is putting thirty five million dollars into a
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  Speaker 2: local fusion energy company. Now that's a reasonable injection of
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  Speaker 2: taxpayer money, especially given no one in the world appears
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  Speaker 2: to have cracked fusion energy just yet. Fusion is, by
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  Speaker 2: the way, the process that powers the sun and the stars.
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  Speaker 2: And Ratumataida is the CEO of Open Star Technologies based
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  Speaker 2: in Wellington.
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  Speaker 3: That ratu Hello, Hello Heather, thank you for having me on.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, you're welcome. Thirty five million dollars is a
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  Speaker 2: fair chunk of change. What are you going to do
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  Speaker 2: with it?
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  Speaker 3: So their capital is there to help support building a
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  Speaker 3: facility in New Zealand that will allow us to undertake
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  Speaker 3: our next major project, that's building a device we call Tahi.
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  Speaker 3: And so we are the ones who have to go
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  Speaker 3: raise the capital to actually build the machine. But the
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  Speaker 3: government is effectively stepping in to help build the facility
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  Speaker 3: that we need to be able to do that. And
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  Speaker 3: ALTI are.
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  Speaker 2: Okay if you raise the money for Tahi, what does
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  Speaker 2: tahi do?
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  Speaker 3: So Tahi is a global scale fusion demonstration device. So
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  Speaker 3: really what we're looking at is lots of different ways
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  Speaker 3: of doing fusion, and open Star is pushing forward a
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  Speaker 3: particular approach. We basically need to show the world that
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  Speaker 3: our approach is as valid, if not absolutely better than
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  Speaker 3: the other ways that people have done this are before.
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  Speaker 3: TAHI is of a scale that will actually achieve that
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  Speaker 3: in a way that scientists, engineers, business people, government governments
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  Speaker 3: across the world will have no choice but to recognize how.
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  Speaker 2: Far away do you reckon? We are years wise, time
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  Speaker 2: wise from being able to actually crack fusion energy and
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  Speaker 2: make it work.
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  Speaker 3: So there's a couple of steps to that. I think
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  Speaker 3: very legitimately it will be the early twenty thirties where
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  Speaker 3: we see more energy out then in and actually giving
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  Speaker 3: people electricity out of a fusion machine. Now that's not
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  Speaker 3: really what you're asking. The real question is when will
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  Speaker 3: it impact people's lives? When will people see a reduction
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  Speaker 3: in their power bill? Because we have fusion reactors being
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  Speaker 3: deployed around the world, and that's actually, you know, probably
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  Speaker 3: the real challenge. There's no point developing these machines if
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  Speaker 3: they can't solve problems for real people in their everyday lives,
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  Speaker 3: and that's a challenge that starts. You know, we've got
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  Speaker 3: a good shot at in the early twenty thirties, but
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  Speaker 3: we'll be spending the decade and the decade after that
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  Speaker 3: rolling that out to humanity and hopefully, yeah, making the
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  Speaker 3: difference that needs to be made.
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  Speaker 2: So ten plus years possibly.
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  Speaker 3: For our first impact.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, So what does the government get for thirty
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  Speaker 2: five million dollars? Does it get a stake in the business.
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  Speaker 3: There is potentially a portion of that arrangement I want
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  Speaker 3: we'll get into details on that, but there is room
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  Speaker 3: for something like that. But importantly, the reason why we're
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  Speaker 3: focused on a facility is to balance the risk reward
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  Speaker 3: for say, the private investors into open Star, who are
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  Speaker 3: taking a bet on us as a technology and a team,
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  Speaker 3: versus the government who have to take a longer term view.
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  Speaker 3: And so the support being focused on a facility means
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  Speaker 3: that we come in, we build Tahi, but that facility
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  Speaker 3: will exist after Tahi is complete. It will exist after
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  Speaker 3: open Star is done. And I can tell you that
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  Speaker 3: we are not the only project that could use a
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  Speaker 3: facility like that, because these kinds of facilities exist around
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  Speaker 3: the world and it's time that New Zealand had that infrastructure.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's fair enough, Thank you very much, and I
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  Speaker 2: really appreciate us in a tighter open Star Technology CEO.
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