I think this says more about the credulity of VCs and their general failure at anything approaching heavy metal technologies than anything else. Transatomic, a startup which is vastly less ambitious than any fusion startup (molten salt reactors are old tech) is a great example. Big oops on this one.

Tri-Alpha was, as far as I can tell, the most legitimate of the fusion companies. My pal Dave just retired from it; he worked on their data efforts. FWIIW my original comment was quoting him.