About
Kyle Schiller is the co-founder and CEO of Marathon Fusion, a San Francisco-based startup launched in 2023 with ex-SpaceX propulsion engineer Adam Rutkowski to revolutionize fusion energy commercialization through breakthrough fuel cycle technologies—like high-throughput metal foil superpermeable pumps and neutron-driven tritium breeding—that slash tritium inventory costs by orders of magnitude, enable smaller plants, and address the global fuel shortage (only ~20kg exists worldwide) for deuterium-tritium reactors. A 2021 Emergent Ventures winner for fusion studies, Schiller—a Carleton College BA in Asian Studies alum—bridged tech, policy, and global health in prior roles: building ML infrastructure at Airbnb, engineering infectious disease analytics at Zenysis in Ethiopia, co-running Founder's Pledge's Equity for Impact program, and serving as a science policy fellow at Schmidt Futures with Tom Kalil. Backed by a $5.9M seed from 1517 Fund, Anglo American, Übermorgen Ventures, and Shared Future Fund—plus DOE ARPA-E/INFUSE awards and Breakthrough Energy Fellows status—Marathon has prototyped superpermeation, secured LOIs from Commonwealth Fusion and Helion, and stunned the field with a 2025 preprint on scalable gold transmutation from mercury in reactors, potentially doubling plant economics via thousands of kg/year byproduct alongside clean gigawatt power. Passionately advocating for fusion's "virtuous cycle" of talent and milestones to deliver abundant, firm energy at terawatt scale, Schiller is engineering the alchemy to propel humanity's energy future.