Investor enthusiasm for fusion is alive and well. Our proof: a fresh batch of funding to the tune of $53.5M for Type One Energy, a startup building a stellarator in Tennessee.
The investment completes Type One’s seed round, which stands at a grand total of $82.4M after the company announced a $29M portion last year. The extension was led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a Bill Gates-backed climate VC firm, and also included participation from Foxglove Ventures, GD1, and Centaurus Capital. TDK Ventures and Doral Energy Tech Ventures participated in last year’s raise.
Star power: Type One Energy spun out of a project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to develop a stellarator—a theoretically more stable but more complex evolution of a tokamak, featuring a twisted shape confining a plasma with magnetic fields.
The seed round will go toward designing the stellarator machine, as well as ramping up partnerships so that the company will be ready to build and deploy fusion energy on the shortest timeline possible.
As for a timeline, the road to getting fusion power on the grid remains long and uncertain.
- Type One CEO Christofer Mowry told Bloomberg, “It will be the mid-2030s when we can put fusion electrons on the grid.”
- A design is expected to be complete by the end of the decade.
Focusing the funding: Type One is looking to branch out geographically from its home base near Oak Ridge, and it’s attracted investors with experience in Southeast Asia specifically, Mowry told TechCrunch.
+ While we’re here…The fund that led Type One’s round is doing some raising of its own. Breakthrough Energy Ventures has raised $839M toward another fund, according to regulatory filings (h/t PitchBook).
Lead Reporter of Ignition
