This post was originally published on this site
Actor/producer Brad Pitt accepts the PGA Visionary Award during the 26th Annual Producers Guild Of America Awards last January in Los Angeles.
Getty Images
Hollywood star Brad Pitt, Steve Job’s widow Laurene Powell Jobs and UK-based stock-picker Neil Woodford are all reportedly investing in a little known “cold fusion company,” the Financial Times said on Friday.
North Carolina-based Industrial Heat, which is valued around $1 billion, is designing “power sources that run on ‘low-energy nuclear reactions’,” the report said.
The company and its investors are betting on a science that creates energy without environmentally harmful gases and nuclear waste.
Although the report says there is no public evidence Industrial Heat’s science works, the company has won over movie star and environment activist Pitt, the wife of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, and English fund manager Neil Woodford’s Woodford Patient Capital Trust.
Powell’s Emerson Collective bought a $10 million stake in the holding company that owns Industrial Heat last year, the report said. Woodford’s stake is around $113 million.
The Briarcliff Trust, which owns Pitt’s Hollywood estate, has held a stake in Industrial Heat’s UK holding company since 2015, the report said.
Pitt and Powell are not the only celebrities betting on nuclear fusion companies. In March, CNBC reported that Jeff Bezos has poured million of dollars into a start-up trying to commercialize fusion energy called General Fusion.
Microsoft is also partnering with General Fusion by offering technological help.
— Read the full Financial Times article here.
