Will Lab-Made Gold Flood the Market? A Startup Just Turned Mercury Into Gold

Marathon Fusion, a San Francisco startup, announced on October 21 that it had converted mercury into stable gold and said the result surpassed a CERN record by a factor of 10. It did not disclose how much gold the test produced or provide experimental data; CERN’s ALICE team had measured about 29 picograms of short-lived gold nuclei from 2015 to 2018. Marathon’s 2025 paper modeled about two tonnes of gold per gigawatt of thermal power annually, assuming plants far larger than its current 1-kilowatt reactor; global mines produced 3,672 tonnes in 2025. The paper said fresh gold would need 7 to 17 years of storage before sale because of radioactive isotopes. Gold had fallen 5.56% below its January 1 level.