- Type One Energy Group has raised $29 million in funding.
Type One Energy Group – a company that has a goal of providing sustainable and affordable fusion power globally – announced the closing of an over-subscribed $29 million financing round. And this effort launches the company’s ambitious, partner-rich, and capital-efficient FusionDirect program to commercialize its stellarator fusion technology. Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV), TDK Ventures, and Doral Energy Tech Ventures co-led the funding round with additional cleantech investment from Darco, the Grantham Foundation, MILFAM, Orbia Ventures, Shorewind Capital, TRIREC, VAHOCA, and others.
Launched by several of the world’s leading stellarator experts, Type One Energy offers concentrated experience from renowned fusion science institutions like the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the U.S., the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Germany and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for their work on advanced magnet technology. The stellarator is known as a fusion technology characterized by inherently stable and steady-state operations.
Related to tokamaks, stellarators do not require massive circulating electric currents to assist in creating the magnetic fields used to confine their fusion plasma. And this makes stellarator technology less physically complex and easier to translate into a practical fusion power plant.
Type One Energy Group’s unique FusionDirect commercialization program takes advantage of recent important breakthroughs to pursue a lowest-risk and shortest-schedule pathway to fusion energy. And the improvements in stellarator fusion performance and plasma science work together with technical innovations in high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnet technology and advanced manufacturing to spark Type One Energy’s launch of FusionDirect.
Type One’s commercialization program is driven through a set of global partnerships with leading fusion science and technology research institutions, universities and industrial companies. And these partnerships reflect the career-long collaborative relationships which the company’s technical leaders bring to Type One Energy. Plus this technical leadership team includes Chief Technology Officer Dr. Thomas Sunn Pedersen, Chief Science Officer Dr. John Canik, Chief Engineer Dr. David Anderson, and Head of Stellarator Plasma Science Dr. Chris Hegna.
In conjunction with this news, the company is onboarding former Breakthrough Energy Ventures’ (BEV) Senior Advisor on Fusion, Christofer Mowry, to serve as Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Previously, Mowry held the CEO position at General Fusion, where he scaled up the company and raised over $200 million in private investment and government support from three countries.
KEY QUOTES:
“Type One Energy represents a special opportunity. This team’s knowledge and credibility gives Type One the unique ability to effectively integrate recent global advances in stellarator-relevant technology and to deliver a fusion power plant without another costly, large-scale, science validation machine.”
— Type One Energy Group CEO Christofer Mowry
“Fusion is the ultimate energy source, and its successful commercialization will be a huge leap towards achieving clean and abundant energy for everyone. Advances in stellarator science, including Type One Energy’s ability to execute a stellarator development project, provide the basis for a very exciting and promising path to practical fusion on the grid in the coming decades.”
— Carmichael Roberts, Breakthrough Energy Ventures
“The science basis for stellarators has taken major leaps forward in the past several years. 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. We look forward to collaborating with Type One Energy to realize the advantages of HTS high-field fusion magnets to their stellarator technology.”
— Dennis Whyte, Director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center
“The world will need a source of high energy density low-carbon power in the coming decades to achieve energy transition and decarbonization. Among several startups that we have evaluated, Type One Energy is on a credible accelerated trajectory to commercialize a steady-state baseload fusion power plant. TDK Ventures is excited to back this highly accomplished leadership team.”
— Tina Tosukhowong, Investment Director at TDK Ventures
