- Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), a company that commercializing fusion energy, announced it raised $115 million in funding
Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), a company that is commercializing fusion energy, announced it has raised $115 million and closed a Series A round. New participants that joined the round include Future Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Lowercase Capital (Chris Sacca), Moore Strategic Ventures, Safar Partners, Schooner Capital, and Starlight Ventures.
These investors are joining Eni, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, The Engine, and several other investors that are committed to supporting the commercialization of fusion energy.
CFS is collaborating with MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center for developing the world’s first net energy gain fusion system (known as SPARC).
“This visionary group of investors share our mission of revolutionizing the energy landscape with a fundamentally new power source to meet our global demands and combat climate change,” said CFS CEO Bob Mumgaard. “CFS is on track to commercialize fusion and deliver an inherently safe, globally scalable, carbon-free, and limitless energy source.”
CFS is leveraging decades of MIT-led research while producing the first-of-its-kind high-temperature superconductor magnets for building smaller and lower-cost fusion power plants.
“We need drastic changes and advances in the way we generate the world’s energy supply,” added Khosla Ventures founder Vinod Khosla. “After looking closely at the fusion landscape, it’s clear that the CFS approach is the world’s best bet for getting commercial fusion power in time to make a difference.”
This round of funding will allow CFS to demonstrate its magnet technology at full scale. And CFS — in collaboration with MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center — is going to use these magnets to build SPARC by 2025 and demonstrate net energy gain from fusion for the first time in history.
Plus SPARC will pave the way for the first commercially viable fusion power plant called ARC — which will produce fusion power onto the grid.
“We have been looking for the right clean energy investment opportunity in fusion for the past 20 years,” explained Future Ventures CEO Steve Jurvetson. “We wanted a company that was ready to make a business of fusion and we have finally found it with Commonwealth Fusion Systems. The hard science from which their approach is based has been proven by this team as well as leaders in the field around the world. With some clever engineering, CFS is ready to harness the power of the solar cycle to change the world and usher in the era of clean baseload energy generation for the betterment of all.”
CFS started out as a student project in 2014 with a goal of reducing the cost of nuclear fusion. The class was taught by Dennis Whyte (head of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center). Whyte designed a new reactor technology called ARC (affordable, robust, and compact).
This technology was still extremely expensive so the class came back with a minimum viable product that would be able to produce a net energy gain (more energy coming out of the reaction than what was put in).
CFS is expecting to have its smallest possible reactor available by 2025. The company has a goal of generating 50 megawatts of energy either as heat or creating electricity using a steam turbine.
