Most "future of work" writing is about software: AI tools, productivity apps, remote-work platforms. This article is about something different — companies doing things that weren't physically possible until recently. A plant in Washington state is producing jet fuel made from CO2, water, and electricity instead of oil. A fusion reactor is being assembled in Massachusetts that expects to produce more energy than it consumes. A humanoid robot is already pulling eight-hour factory shifts at a BMW plant. None of these are prototypes or press releases. They are commercial operations with paying customers, serious investors, and open job listings. For NC workers wondering what an entirely different kind of career might look like, these are the companies worth knowing about right now.
Why This Industrial Moment Is Different
The Gap Between Lab and Commercial Has Collapsed
For decades, deep-tech innovation followed a predictable arc: promising research, university spinout, perpetual "five years away from commercialization," eventual quiet death or acquisition. The reason this cycle broke down was capital — building physical infrastructure is expensive, and venture capital optimized for software's near-zero marginal cost. What changed is a combination of better science, cheaper renewable electricity, and a new wave of investors (sovereign wealth funds, strategic corporates, climate-focused institutional capital) willing to fund industrial-scale buildout. The companies below all share one feature that distinguishes them from every prior generation of clean-tech startups: they have customers, revenue, and physical plants in operation or under active construction.
These Are Manufacturing Jobs, Engineering Jobs, Operations Jobs
The workforce these companies need is not primarily composed of software engineers. They need chemical process engineers, electrochemical scientists, plant operators, quality control technicians, supply chain specialists, regulatory affairs professionals, and project managers who can coordinate first-of-kind construction. Many of these roles pay well above North Carolina's median income — and they're being filled right now, not at some future date when the technology "matures." The skills NC workers have built in biotech, advanced manufacturing, aerospace supply chains, and energy are directly transferable.
Twelve: The Company Making Products From Air, Not Oil
What They Actually Do
Twelve calls itself "the carbon transformation company." The core technology is an electrochemical reactor that uses CO2, water, and renewable electricity to produce hydrocarbons — the same building-block molecules currently extracted from oil and gas. Their first commercial facility, AirPlant One, opened in Moses Lake, Washington, and produces two products: E-Jet® sustainable aviation fuel, which Alaska Airlines has already used in commercial flights, and E-Naphtha™, a petrochemical feedstock used in plastics, solvents, and other everyday materials. In plain terms: they are manufacturing the outputs of a refinery, but the inputs are carbon dioxide from the air instead of crude oil from the ground.
The Scale of Funding and the Seriousness of the Mission
Twelve has raised over $700 million, including a $645 million round led by TPG Rise Climate in September 2024 and an $83 million follow-on in early 2025. Their investors include Microsoft, Amazon's Climate Pledge Fund, and Coca-Cola's Sustainability Fund — companies that need sustainable fuel and feedstock supply chains and are paying Twelve to build them. This is not philanthropic climate investment. It's strategic procurement from corporations with legally binding emissions targets. Twelve is a Benefit Corporation, which means its obligation to its mission is legally encoded in its charter alongside its obligation to shareholders. The company's co-founder and chief science officer, Dr. Etosha Cave, is a Stanford-trained electrochemist who has spent her career on exactly this problem. The people at Twelve are not pivoting into energy — they built their careers for it.
What the Career Opportunity Looks Like
Twelve's job listings span process engineering, plant operations, electrochemical research, quality systems, and business development focused on selling eMade products to consumer brands. If you have a background in chemical engineering, manufacturing operations, or industrial process control, Twelve is a direct application of those skills at a company doing something genuinely unprecedented. More AirPlants are planned — each one will need a full team to build and operate.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Helion: The Fusion Energy Race Is Real
Two Companies, One Goal, Different Approaches
Nuclear fusion — the reaction that powers the sun — has been a scientific goal for 70 years. The joke used to be that it was always 30 years away. In 2026, two well-funded private companies are building commercial fusion machines and expect to deliver electricity to the grid within a few years, not decades. Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), spun out of MIT, installed the first magnet in its SPARC reactor earlier this year and is targeting first plasma in 2027. SPARC will be the first commercially relevant fusion machine to produce more energy than it consumes. CFS has raised $4 billion and is considering an IPO within three years. Their recent hire of former Moderna CFO Lorence Kim signals a company transitioning from science project to commercial enterprise.
Helion's Different Bet — With Microsoft's Money Behind It
Helion Energy, backed by Sam Altman and a range of institutional investors, is building its Orion fusion machine in Malaga, Washington. In June 2026, Helion raised $465 million in a Series G at a $15.5 billion valuation — nearly tripling its previous valuation — bringing total funding to $1.5 billion. Helion has already signed a power purchase agreement with Microsoft: they've committed to delivering at least 50 megawatts of fusion electricity to a Microsoft data center by 2028, with Constellation Energy managing transmission. Their Polaris prototype has achieved plasma temperatures exceeding 150 million degrees Celsius — ten times hotter than the sun's core — a milestone that confirms the physics works. What remains is the engineering to do it at commercial scale, reliably, continuously.
Why Fusion Matters for Anyone Thinking About a Long Career
If either of these companies succeeds — and both now have credible paths — the downstream effect on energy, manufacturing, computing, and industrial chemicals is difficult to overstate. Fusion power plants don't use fossil fuels, produce no long-lived radioactive waste, and can't melt down. They need plasma physicists, yes, but also mechanical and electrical engineers, cryogenics technicians, magnet fabricators, control systems engineers, materials scientists, and the entire supply chain that supports large industrial construction. The workforce that builds the world's first commercial fusion plants will develop expertise that doesn't exist anywhere yet — because the plants don't exist yet.
Figure AI: Humanoid Robots Already Clocking Factory Shifts
From Research to Revenue in Three Years
Figure AI builds bipedal humanoid robots. Its Figure 02 stands 168 centimeters tall, has five-fingered hands, and can carry 20-kilogram payloads. In January 2026, Figure deployed a software update giving the robot full-body autonomy from visual input — it can now complete an eight-hour factory shift without human intervention, processing parts and performing repetitive assembly tasks by seeing and interpreting its environment in real time. Figure's robots are already working at BMW's manufacturing plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina — just over the border from the Charlotte metro. The company operates its own manufacturing facility, BotQ, aiming to produce 12,000 robots per year.
The Funding Numbers Signal This Is Not a Moonshot Anymore
Figure AI has raised approximately $2.34 billion and carries a $39 billion valuation as of mid-2026 — its Series C, which closed in September 2025, brought in over $1 billion with participation from Nvidia, Intel Capital, and Salesforce. The company employs roughly 500 people. For context: a $39 billion valuation with 500 employees means investors expect Figure to capture a significant portion of an industrial automation market worth trillions of dollars globally. The humanoid form factor matters because most factories and warehouses are built for humans — aisles, shelves, stairs, tools, workstations — and a robot that fits into that environment without requiring a purpose-built facility is dramatically easier to deploy than a fixed robotic arm or conveyor system.
The Adjacent Career Opportunity
Figure isn't hiring to replace the workforce — it's building a product that will be deployed into the existing workforce alongside humans. The interesting career opportunity isn't necessarily working at Figure directly. It's understanding what's coming in manufacturing, logistics, and warehouse operations so you can position ahead of it: robot fleet management, human-robot collaboration design, quality assurance for automated systems, maintenance and repair technicians for humanoid hardware. These roles don't fully exist yet at scale, but they will within a few years. BMW Spartanburg's proximity to NC means this is not an abstraction — it's happening at a plant that employs supply chain workers and contractors across the Charlotte region.
What Skills These Companies Actually Need
The Obvious Ones — And the Ones People Overlook
Every article about deep-tech careers focuses on STEM: chemical engineering for Twelve, plasma physics for fusion, robotics for Figure. Those roles exist and pay extremely well — six-figure salaries are the floor at all three companies for engineers with relevant experience. But building and scaling a first-of-kind physical company also requires people who are genuinely good at non-technical work in high-complexity environments: technical project managers who can coordinate construction timelines across dozens of contractors and regulators; regulatory affairs specialists who navigate energy, aviation, and manufacturing permitting; communications and policy professionals who translate science for investors, governments, and the public; supply chain managers who can source novel materials at scale for the first time; finance professionals with experience in project finance, PPAs, and capital-intensive industrial buildout. NC's universities — NC State in engineering, UNC and Duke in science and policy, UNC-Charlotte in advanced manufacturing — produce talent for exactly these roles.
How to Learn What You Need to Know
None of these industries have standardized training pipelines yet because they didn't exist as industries a decade ago. The most useful approach is self-directed: read each company's technical blog (Twelve's Catalyst blog is particularly good), follow the research coming out of relevant university labs, and understand the business model and economics of the specific technology. An operations manager who understands why a DSCR covenant matters in project finance, or a logistics coordinator who knows the difference between sustainable aviation fuel and green hydrogen, is significantly more valuable to these companies than someone who can only do the job they already have.
The NC Connection
Research Triangle as a Pipeline, Not Just a Destination
North Carolina's Research Triangle — home to NC State, Duke, UNC, and Research Triangle Park — is one of the strongest science and engineering talent pipelines in the Southeast. The region already has deep roots in life sciences, semiconductors, and advanced manufacturing that map directly onto what Twelve, CFS, Helion, and Figure need. NC State's engineering programs in chemical, electrical, and materials science consistently produce graduates competitive for exactly these roles. The UNC system's public health and policy programs are relevant for regulatory and government affairs work at energy companies navigating a complex permitting environment.
Charlotte's Advanced Manufacturing Position
Charlotte has quietly become one of the South's most important advanced manufacturing hubs, with significant aerospace supply chain presence, power generation infrastructure, and a growing fintech sector that funds industrial growth. The region's proximity to BMW Spartanburg — now operating humanoid robots — means Charlotte-area workers in manufacturing operations, quality, and supply chain are the first in the Southeast to encounter these technologies at a working facility. That proximity is an advantage: the people who understand how robots like Figure 02 interact with a real production environment will be far more employable in the next manufacturing economy than those who only read about it. If you are considering what to do next with a career in NC's industrial base, look at what's being deployed at BMW now — because it is coming everywhere else within five to ten years. For broader context on how these career moves fit into a long-term financial picture, see our guide on building wealth on an NC salary and what it takes to hit $100K in North Carolina.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to move to be part of these industries?
For now, most of the hands-on work at Twelve, CFS, and Helion is on the West Coast and in New England, where their current plants are located. Figure AI operates in Sunnyvale, California, with deployment at BMW Spartanburg. However, both the fusion and carbon transformation industries are planning significant geographic expansion as they scale. More broadly, the supply chain, regulatory, finance, and communications roles that support these companies are often remote-eligible or located in major metro areas. The most practical first step isn't moving — it's building relevant knowledge and a track record of applying it.
How do salaries at these companies compare to traditional NC employers?
For engineers with directly relevant experience, total compensation at well-funded deep-tech startups typically exceeds comparable roles at established industrial companies, with meaningful equity upside if the company succeeds. Entry-level engineering roles at CFS and Figure have been reported in the $90,000–$130,000 range; senior and staff engineers earn considerably more. Non-technical roles in operations, finance, and policy are generally competitive with equivalent corporate roles plus equity. The tradeoff is the risk inherent in companies building first-of-kind technology — equity may be worth a lot, or nothing. See our NC salary benchmarks by industry for context on how these figures compare to what NC employers typically pay.
Are there NC companies doing similar things?
North Carolina's Research Triangle Park has a significant cluster of clean energy, biotech, and advanced materials companies that do adjacent work. The state's investment in silicon carbide semiconductor manufacturing (centered on the Durham/RTP corridor) reflects the same transition from fossil-fuel-dependent supply chains to electrified alternatives that Twelve and the fusion companies represent. NC's offshore wind supply chain buildout — driven by federal leasing in the Atlantic — is creating manufacturing and operations jobs in the Wilmington area that share a technical profile with deep-tech manufacturing broadly. The companies and technologies profiled here aren't the only ones — they're the most dramatic current examples of a trend reshaping what industrial work means at every level of the economy.
What's the most practical first step for someone interested in these industries?
Read everything these companies publish — their technical blogs, their patent filings, their job descriptions, and the academic papers their founders cite. Understand not just what they do but why their specific approach is viable when previous attempts weren't. Then look honestly at your current skills and find the overlap: a manufacturing engineer with SOP writing experience is valuable to Twelve's plant operations team; a project finance professional who understands energy contracts is valuable to Helion's commercial team; a quality engineer with automotive background understands what Figure's customers (BMW, logistics companies) actually need. The people who get into these industries early are rarely the ones who waited until a perfect credential existed — they're the ones who built a genuine understanding of the technology and showed up ready to work on unsolved problems.
