The pitch Patrick Soon-Shiong heard wasn't about clean energy. Not exactly.
When the billionaire physician-entrepreneur sat down with SHINE Technologies last year, the Wisconsin company wasn't selling him on a future where fusion reactors power cities. They were selling cancer treatment—specifically, a beta-emitting isotope called lutetium-177 that SHINE already manufactures and ships to 19 countries. The fusion part? That comes later, maybe a decade out. For now, SHINE makes money from neutrons.
Soon-Shiong wrote a check for $150 million.
On February 26, SHINE closed a $240 million Series E with Soon-Shiong's NantWorks leading—his personal stake represents roughly 63% of the round—and the company crossed $1 billion in total funding. He secured a board seat and, perhaps more tellingly, priority access to SHINE's Lu-177 supply for his cancer therapy ventures at ImmunityBio. The rest of the capital came from an eclectic mix: Fidelity Management & Research Company returned after backing SHINE's 2023 round. Sumitomo Corporation of Americas, which struck an Asia distribution deal with the company last April, joined alongside Pelican Energy Partners, a private equity firm pivoting hard into nuclear services with a $450 million fund earmarked for the sector. Long-time backers Deerfield Management and Oaktree Capital Management—investors since 2018 and 2019, respectively, when SHINE was still building out its isotope facilities—participated as well.
The round tells a story about pragmatism, or perhaps impatience. While most fusion startups chase net energy gain and wrestle with plasma containment, SHINE's been collecting revenue since 2020.
Neutrons Now, Energy Later
SHINE's business model hinges on a counterintuitive insight: fusion's near-term value isn't electricity. It's the byproducts.
The company operates three revenue streams that fund its eventual push toward grid power. First, neutron testing services for aerospace and defense contractors who need to simulate radiation exposure on satellites and military hardware. Second, medical isotopes for cancer treatment—primarily Lu-177, which the company brands as Ilumira and produces at commercial scale from its Cassiopeia facility in Janesville, Wisconsin. Third, SPECT diagnostic imaging products acquired from Lantheus Medical Imaging in a deal that closed January 2, adding technetium-99m generators and a portfolio of cardiac and neurological imaging agents to SHINE's catalog.
By June 2025, the company reported shipping Lu-177 to customers across four continents with better than 95% on-time, in-full delivery—a metric that sounds mundane until you consider the complexity of producing, packaging, and shipping radioactive material with exacting decay timelines. The Cassiopeia facility churns out 100,000 doses annually. Capacity could double.
SHINE filed a Drug Master File with the FDA and submitted a marketing application to the European Medicines Agency, bureaucratic milestones that matter more than they sound. Lu-177 has become a battleground in precision oncology following Novartis' success with Pluvicto, a radioligand therapy for prostate cancer that attached the isotope to molecules that hunt tumor cells. Big Pharma has taken notice. The M&A has been aggressive.
That context helps explain Soon-Shiong's interest. NantWorks isn't just betting on SHINE's technology—it's securing supply chain access for ImmunityBio's radioligand therapy pipeline. In an industry where isotope availability can bottleneck clinical trials, priority access carries strategic weight.
The Long Game on Recycling
The fresh capital will push SHINE into territory that makes some observers nervous: used nuclear fuel recycling.
The company landed spots in two federal programs this year. In February, the Department of Energy selected SHINE for a $19.3 million recycling technologies initiative. Earlier, ARPA-E's NEWTON program—focused on transmutation research that could theoretically reduce nuclear waste half-lives—awarded funding. SHINE signed a memorandum of understanding with France's Orano in 2024 to co-develop a U.S. pilot recycling plant, and struck a partnership with Standard Nuclear last July to route recycled materials into TRISO fuel and isotope power systems.
Nuclear recycling remains contentious in the U.S., caught between waste management realities and proliferation concerns that have stalled commercial reprocessing for decades. Whether SHINE can navigate that thicket while scaling its medical isotope business is an open question.
The company's also ramping toward molybdenum-99 production at its Chrysalis facility—a project backed by $32 million from the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration. Mo-99 decays into technetium-99m, the workhorse isotope for diagnostic imaging used in roughly 40 million procedures annually worldwide. SHINE targets early 2027 for commercial output.
The Lantheus acquisition gave SHINE a shortcut into that market. Along with TechneLite generators came manufacturing operations in North Billerica, Massachusetts, and established brands like Cardiolite and NEUROLITE that already sit in hospital imaging departments.
From Layoffs to Validation
This raise marks a sharp reversal from 2023, when SHINE laid off roughly 59 employees amid cash-flow pressures and a fundraising environment that had soured on anything requiring patient capital. The company tightened its focus on the Lu-177 business while holding the Mo-99 timeline steady—a pivot that appears to have worked, at least judging by Soon-Shiong's willingness to cut a nine-figure check.
Founder and CEO Greg Piefer, a University of Wisconsin-Madison PhD who spun SHINE out of his earlier venture Phoenix Nuclear Labs in 2010, has consistently preached revenue before energy. It's a philosophy born partly from necessity—fusion's reputation as perpetually "30 years away" doesn't inspire confidence among investors conditioned to expect returns within a decade—and partly from opportunity. Fusion produces neutrons. Neutrons have commercial uses today. Why wait?
Phoenix, now a SHINE subsidiary, runs neutron imaging and radiation-effects testing from Fitchburg, Wisconsin, serving aerospace and defense customers. The company claims 100% uptime and 98% on-time delivery. In 2023, it added high-energy 14-MeV neutron testing capabilities. SHINE also operates the North Billerica facility and is designing an advanced isotope production site in Veendam, Netherlands, backed by a €10.5 million Dutch government grant for terbium isotope development.
The Fusion Outlier
Timing matters. Private fusion investment hit record levels in 2025, with PitchBook data showing 43 deals totaling $2.3 billion as companies like Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Helion Energy entered capital-intensive construction phases. Governments are paying attention—the U.S., UK, and China have all announced fusion initiatives in the past 18 months. The sector feels less speculative than it did five years ago, though perhaps more than it should.
SHINE occupies an unusual position in that landscape. While most fusion startups chase breakeven energy production—the point where output exceeds input, a milestone that remains elusive across the industry—SHINE's already collecting checks from cancer clinics and aerospace engineers.
The company's four-phase roadmap reflects that pragmatism: neutron testing, medical isotopes, fuel recycling, fusion power. Each phase funds the next. Whether that model scales to grid-level electricity production remains uncertain. Fusion power requires solving problems SHINE hasn't yet tackled at scale—containment duration, materials science, capital costs that dwarf anything the company's raised so far.
But SHINE isn't betting the company on fusion energy arriving on schedule. It's betting that neutrons alone justify the technology, and that fusion power, if it works, becomes a bonus rather than the business plan.
For now, Soon-Shiong seems convinced. His $150 million wager suggests he believes the isotope business is real, regardless of whether SHINE ever lights up a city block.
The cancer patients waiting for Lu-177 shipments probably don't care much about fusion's timeline either way. They just need the isotope to arrive on time.
It has been. Ninety-five percent of the time, anyway.
