High-risk is something that private industry rarely to never does (except on vanity projects). All of the venture capital in Silicon Valley is really chasing me

High-risk is something that private industry rarely to never does (except on vanity projects). All of the venture capital in Silicon Valley is really chasing medium-risk, not high-risk. Beyond big tickets like fusion, I would direct you to things like initial drug investigations (almost all done in University labs with government grants), or rocket development (almost all done under government grants). In all of these cases the initial development of things that are unlikely to work out are done on public funds, and once it looks like it is just down to the details (still a big undertaking) then private funding steps in. The pattern here is almost always: socialize costs/risks, privatize gains.