If LPP manages to demonstrate feasibility (or just establish new science with the strong magnetic field effect for example), there will most likely be a flurry of interest in theirs, but also in other, related, proposals.
It’s phase II that you should be worried about because that’s where the skeptics will most likely direct their arrows, and justifiably so, in particular they will: nag about electrode erosion, skin the “onion”, snifle about the ultra-fast-yet-to-be-invented switches with unheard of duty cycles. But this will all be fine. Because, and i completely agree with Tulse here, it puts you in the hands of the engineers (that’s what ITER is: it’s not big science, rather it is big engineering; and admittedly, a tiny bit of science as well 😉 ).
I’m not saying they can lean back and rake in the money after achieving phase I. But let’s face it: it would be a monumental contribution in it’s own right and, once replicated, would lend LPP a tremendous credibility.