Meet the CMO trying to make nuclear fusion cool

“Turning SPARC on is the Kitty Hawk moment for fusion, so we think it’s important to capture and tell this story to a worldwide audience,” Paluska said, referring to the town where the Wright brothers achieved the first powered flight.

Jeff Galak, associate professor of marketing at Carnegie Mellon University, said CFS will have to tread carefully in its strategy to position itself more like a lifestyle brand, given that Gen Z’s primary relationship with energy is rooted in climate anxiety and utility-level pragmatism, not hype.

“Trying to make an invisible, pre-commercial B2B infrastructure technology ‘cool’ to a generation hyper-sensitive to greenwashing is an incredibly uphill, and likely ineffective, battle,” Galak said.