Scott Nolan - SpaceX, Founders Fund, and Rebuilding American Uranium Enrichment - [Invest Like the Best, EP.467]

About this episode

Scott Nolan discusses the critical issue of rebuilding US uranium enrichment and the challenges faced in the nuclear energy sector.

Scott Nolan spent 12 years at Founders Fund looking for the most important problems that no one else was funding. Then he found a problem so critical, and so ignored, that he couldn't find a company to back. So he started one. General Matter is rebuilding US uranium enrichment. The United States was the world leader in enrichment through the 1980s and then stopped entirely. Today roughly a quarter of US enriched uranium comes from Russia, a ban on those imports takes full effect in 2028, and the advanced reactors everyone is counting on to power the next wave of data centers have no reliable domestic fuel source. Scott believes enrichment is the single bottleneck to a nuclear future, and that the window to solve it is narrow. The conversation covers how Peter Thiel influenced him, why being in love with an idea is dangerous for investors but required for founders, and what it actually takes to rebuild an industrial capability the country let atrophy for 40 years. Please enjoy my conversation with Scott Nolan. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. ----- Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly…

People in this episode

Host: Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Guest: Scott Nolan

Topics covered

• uranium enrichment
• nuclear energy
• investment
• industrial capability
• technology innovation
• founders and investors

Keywords

• uranium
• nuclear future
• investment
• Founders Fund
• General Matter
• Peter Thiel
• industrial capability
• energy independence

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Founders Fund, General Matter, SpaceX

Places: United States, Russia

More episodes of Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

• Alex Sacerdote - How to Invest Through Technology Cycles - [Invest Like the Best, EP.477] · June 9, 2026 · 1h 11m
• Dara Khosrowshahi - Uber's Bet on AVs, AI, and Building a Super-App - [Invest Like the Best, EP.476] · June 3, 2026 · 1h 7m
• Dan Loeb - Lessons from 30 Years of Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.475] · May 28, 2026 · 1h 3m
• Darren Farber on Iran, China, and the Rise of Neoprimes - [Invest Like the Best, EP.474] · May 26, 2026 · 46 min
• Gavin Baker - Watts and Wafers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.473] · May 20, 2026 · 1h 17m
• Krishna Rao - Anthropic's CFO on Compute, Scaling to $30B ARR, and the Returns to Frontier Intelligence - [Invest Like the Best, EP.472] · May 13, 2026 · 1h 16m