Corporate backers Doral Energy Tech Ventures and TDK Ventures co-led the oversubscribed financing for fusion startup Type One Energy, in a sign of growing investor confidence in the clean energy technology.
Type One Energy, a US company founded in 2019, will use the funding to support the commercialisation of its stellarator fusion technology.
Stellarator technology confines plasma, a type of gas where fusion reactions take place, using external magnets. The company claims the technology can be commercialised with the lowest risk and on the shortest timeframe compared with other approaches.
In contrast to tokamaks, another type of device used to confine plasma to trigger fusion reactions, stellarators do not require massive amounts of electric current to create magnetic fields to hold the fusion plasma.
“Through a combination of experimental demonstrations and the use of high-performance computing, the stage is set for the development of power plant-scale machines,” said Dennis Whyte, director of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, in a release.
Breakthrough Energy, the clean energy investment firm founded by Bill Gates, also co-led the round. Investors Darco Capital, the Grantham Foundation, Milfam and RA Capital participated in the funding.
The fusion energy sector has attracted increasing amounts of private capital in the past couple of years as advancements in semiconductor technology and computing power have put the nascent technology on a path to commercialisation.
Type One Energy’s leadership team is made up of experts from academic fusion science institutions, including the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Germany, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Wisconsin.
The company has hired Christofer Mowry, former Breakthrough Energy Ventures senior advisor on fusion, to head the startup.