Vermögensfonds setzt darauf, dass er die Wüste von New Mexico in ein fortschrittliches Technologiezentrum verwandeln kann

*More from Bloomberg News reporters Dawn Lim and Sana Pashankar:*

If all goes according to plan for the nation’s second-largest sovereign wealth fund, a barren stretch of desert in Albuquerque’s plains will soon become a research [center](https://www.pacificfusion.com/updates/pacific-fusion-announces-expansion-to-new-mexico-with-new-research-and-manufacturing-campus) where scientists replicate nuclear fusion — the process that powers the sun and stars.

The $1 billion project from startup Pacific Fusion seeks to unlock a new energy source, a bold goal for experimental technology that’s years away from practical breakthroughs. That didn’t stop the New Mexico State Investment Council, the sovereign wealth fund investing the state’s oil and gas revenues, from telling the firm to build big.

When Pacific Fusion worried whether private capital in the state would support its ambitions to create commercially viable power by fusing light atoms, the oil fund said cash would come. Punctuating its point, the wealth fund dispensed hundreds of millions across venture funds committed to developing fusion in the state.

It’s part of a bid to revive returns at a private equity initiative that one state official called one of the most expensive economic development programs in New Mexico history. The state’s wealth fund overhauled the program it drove for years and rolled out a new venture capital push focused on its backyard.

It’s now ramping up investments in a wave of venture firms angling to find the next big innovator in defense, advanced tech and energy, and encouraging them to invest in New Mexico.