US Startup Secures $1.8 B Funds for Nuclear Fusion Project

Massachusetts-based Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) has closed on more than $1.8 billion in Series B funding to commercialize fusion energy. This includes capital to construct, commission, and operate SPARC, the “world’s first commercially relevant net energy fusion machine.”

In addition, it will enable the company to begin work on ARC, the “first commercial fusion power plant,” which includes developing support technologies, advancing the design, identifying the site, and assembling the partners and customers for the future of fusion power.

The round was led by Tiger Global Management with participation by new investors, including Bill Gates, Emerson Collective, and Google, among others.

CFS’s path to commercial fusion energy can be summarised thus:

• 2018: Company founded based on decades of MIT fusion research
• 2020: Published a series of peer reviewed publications in the Journal of Plasma Physics that verifies SPARC will achieve net energy from fusion
• 2021: Started construction on campus that will host the SPARC building, a manufacturing facility, and company headquarters
• 2021: In collaboration with MIT, built and successfully demonstrated groundbreaking high temperature superconducting magnets, the strongest of their kind and the key technology to unlock commercial fusion energy
• 2025: SPARC achieves commercially relevant net energy from fusion
  Early 2030s: First fusion power plant, called ARC, is completed

“The world is ready to make big investments in commercial fusion as a key part of the global energy transition. This diverse group of investors includes a spectrum of capital from energy and technology companies to venture capitalists, hedge funds, and university endowments that believe in fusion as a large-scale solution to decarbonize the planet,” said CFS CEO Bob Mumgaard.

“Economical fusion power would deliver massive benefits to the world, enabling us to avoid dangerous climate change while allowing everyone to have a high standard of living. CFS is working to achieve fusion at this scale and they have the technology that gives us a path to commercialization in the next decade,” said Carmichael Roberts, Breakthrough Energy Ventures.

“Fusion is the kind of innovation that can help fill the gaps in grids and put an end to fossil fuels. CFS is a company that executes – making possible what seemed impossible, one technical milestone at a time,” said John Doerr, chair of Kleiner Perkins and author of Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now.

CFS has raised more than $2 billion in funding since it was founded in 2018.