General Fusion announced on Tuesday that it had successfully created plasma, a superheated fourth state of matter required for fusion, inside a prototype reactor. The milestone marks the beginning of a 93-week quest to prove that the outfit’s steampunk approach to fusion power remains a viable contender. The reactor, called Lawson Machine 26 (LM26), is […]
General Fusion fires up its newest steampunk fusion reactor Read More »
Fusion power startups have long been stalked by one stubborn question: Will the technology work? But now, with net-positive fusion power no longer the stuff of science fiction, a fresh crop of startups have been founded on more mundane questions: Can reactors be built for less money? How can maintenance be made simpler? The answers
Renaissance Fusion raises €32M to radically simplify complex fusion reactors Read More »
Few fusion startups have been as closely watched as Helion. The 12-year-old company is backed by Sam Altman, rumored to be in talks with OpenAI, and has a deal to supply Microsoft with electricity by 2028 — years earlier than its competitors. The company’s unorthodox approach to fusion power and relative secrecy has earned it
Helion raises $425M to help build a fusion reactor for Microsoft Read More »
A lot can change in a few months. The climate tech world hasn’t exactly been turned upside down, but it’s definitely more askew than it was in the summer. The U.S. federal election results may have imperiled the startup-friendly Inflation Reduction Act, likely throwing a wrench into many companies’ business plans. Yet at the same
2025 will be the year climate tech learns to love AI Read More »
Commonwealth Fusion Systems will build its first commercial-scale power plant just outside of Richmond, Virginia, the company announced today, with a goal of hooking it up to the grid in the early 2030s. Fusion power has long been derided as being decades away, but the new milestone assumes the possibility of commercial operations within the
Fusion power startup Focused Energy has signed a deal to buy two of the world’s most powerful lasers, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. The massive lasers will be installed in the startup’s future facility, which it is building in the San Francisco Bay Area over the next two years. “These are some of the highest-average-power
Focused Energy buys two of the world’s most powerful lasers for its fusion quest Read More »
As the world races to add more power plants to satiate AI’s thirst for electricity, investors have been plowing money into nuclear fusion, the pie-in-the-sky technology that appears to be inching its way toward commercial viability. The latest exhibit: Tokamak Energy, a UK-based startup that’s working to refine its squeezed-doughnut approach to fusion power. The
Fusion startup Tokamak Energy attracts $125M for its egg-like reactor design Read More »
For fusion power aficionados, hitting “breakeven” is something of a Holy Grail: the point at which a fusion reaction produces more power than was required to ignite it. Only one scientific experiment, at the National Ignition Facility, has accomplished that feat, and it took over a decade of tweaking the system to achieve the monumental
Zap Energy shows off its new fusion power prototype, Century Read More »
Over the last several years, fusion power has gone from the butt of jokes — always a decade away! — to an increasingly tangible and tantalizing technology that has drawn investors off the sidelines. The technology may be challenging to master and expensive to build today, but fusion promises to harness the nuclear reaction that
Every fusion startup that has raised over $100M Read More »
Fusion startups have been on a fundraising tear lately, and a young startup, Acceleron Fusion, is joining the pack, having raised $15 million of a targeted $23.7 million round, according to an SEC filing. The fusion sector recently has been showered with interest from investors, who no doubt have been encouraged by the breakthrough experiment
Acceleron Fusion has raised $15M to take another stab at cold fusion, filing reveals Read More »
