Fusion Firm Gets $1 Billion in Bid to Commercialize Technology
(Bloomberg) -- Commonwealth Fusion Systems, already the best-funded nuclear fusion developer, raised another $1 billion to help complete systems designed to generate electricity on Earth by recreating the conditions inside stars.
The company has now attracted a total of $4 billion, accounting for about 30% of all funding raised by fusion developers to date, according to a statement Thursday. The latest round is the industry’s biggest since Commonwealth garnered $1.8 billion in 2021.
Fusion promises abundant, carbon-free energy, but it will require overcoming significant scientific and engineering hurdles to commercialize the technology, and progress has been slow. That’s one of the reasons why earlier funding rounds for the industry featured individual billionaires who were comfortable making speculative investments in a field where success has never been guaranteed. Commonwealth’s latest funding shows this is changing, a sign of growing confidence.
“This is a new class of capital,” Bob Mumgaard, Commonwealth’s chief executive officer, said during a conference call.
Commonwealth’s investors now include pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, industrial partners and infrastructure investors, though the Devens, Massachusetts-based company didn’t identify them.
Fusion involves replicating the conditions within a star, generating intense heat and pressure that forces small atoms to fuse into larger elements, releasing energy. Commonwealth has completed about 80% of a demonstration system at its headquarters and expects to switch it on next year.
The goal is to contain a superheated cloud of plasma within a donut-shaped device known as a tokamak, triggering a fusion reaction that releases more energy than is required to sustain it. If successful, the demonstration would pave the way for the company’s first commercial power plant, which it is already developing in Virginia.
“This really puts us in a position where we can go quickly,” Mumgaard said.
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