Since a groundbreaking government experiment in 2022 demonstrated that fusion energy is closer to reality than previously thought, enthusiasm among physicists, engineers, and investors has surged.
This excitement is particularly evident in the latest development involving Type One Energy, which has announced an impressive $53.5 million in new funding.
Following an initial $29 million raised in 2023, this extension brings the company’s total funding to approximately $82.5 million.
Leading this extension is Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures, with additional participation from Australia-based Foxglove Ventures and New Zealand-based GD1.
Ambitious Goals and Strategic Partnerships
Type One Energy aims to expedite the commercialization of its fusion technology by leveraging partnerships, as stated by CEO Christofer Mowry in an interview with TechCrunch.
The company’s objective is to finalize its reactor design by the decade’s end, enabling a third party to commence construction.
“Given the rate at which we want to accelerate, we needed a larger quantum of capital,” Mowry explained. “We weren’t going to achieve our goals with typical seed rounds of $20 million to $40 million.”
Another aim of this funding round is to engage partners with a deep understanding of Southeast Asia, home to a significant portion of the global population.
Mowry highlighted the urgency of decarbonizing the region, noting, “In the last five years, China built more coal plants than the entire installed base of North American coal plants. If we don’t find a way to decarbonize the region, we might as well fold up the tent and go home.”
Innovative Reactor Design
Type One Energy is developing a stellarator reactor, a variant of the more common tokamak design. While a tokamak resembles a doughnut, a stellarator is often compared to a cronut—still circular but more complex and contorted.
The stellarator’s shape is defined by magnets creating a uniquely shaped field to confine the super-heated plasma necessary for fusion reactions. In this magnetic field, hydrogen atoms in the plasma collide, fusing and releasing immense energy.
Historical and Technological Context
The stellarator concept is not new, but fine-tuning its design requires substantial computing power. The world’s largest stellarator is in Germany, capable of operating for extended periods. Another operates at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where Type One originated.
These projects convinced Mowry that the stellarator’s time had arrived, leading him to join Type One in early 2023.
However, the German stellarator, Wendelstein 7-X, despite being a strong foundation, would need to be significantly larger to function as a power plant, which is economically unfeasible.
Advances in Computing and Design
Fortunately, technological advancements have made significant progress since the initial design of Wendelstein 7-X over 30 years ago.
Type One now collaborates with Summit, an exascale supercomputer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, capable of performing 250 million times more calculations per second than supercomputers of the early 1980s.
With Summit’s capabilities, Mowry stated, “We can sharpen the pencil on the design.”
Type One’s reactor magnets utilize a design licensed from MIT, similar to those used by Commonwealth Fusion Systems. However, Type One has adapted the cables to fit the stellarator’s unique structure.
Future Plans
Next year, Type One aims to finalize the core reactor design and begin constructing a prototype reactor named Infinity One.
This will occur alongside the design process for a pilot reactor. Type One hopes to finalize the pilot design by 2030 and then license it to another company for construction.
“When Infinity One operates and we test it, it’s actually verifying the key design aspects of the pilot plant,” Mowry explained. The goal is not only to prove functionality but also to validate the machine’s assembly and maintenance processes.
“If you build a fusion machine, whether it’s a stellarator or any other kind, and it takes you two years to shut it down, maintain it, and restart it, you’re going to sell exactly none,” he emphasized.