The successful commercialisation of Fusion Energy will be a huge leap towards achieving clean, affordable and abundant energy to every city across the globe. US-based Type One Energy is a stellarator fusion energy company, which works with the mission to provide sustainable, affordable fusion power to the world.
In a recent development, Type One Energy secured $29 million in an over-subscribed first financing round. The investment round was co-led by Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV) that backed Terabase Energy, Weavegrid, and I-ROX, TDK Ventures and Doral Energy Tech Ventures alongside additional investment from Darco, the Grantham Foundation, MILFAM, Orbia Ventures, Shorewind Capital, TRIREC, VAHOCA and others.
With the investment, the total funding raised by the company accounts for $30.7 million. Type One Energy intends to use the fresh funds to launch its ambitious, partner-rich, and capital-efficient FusionDirect program to commercialise its stellarator fusion technology.
“Fusion is the ultimate energy source, and its successful commercialization will be a huge leap towards achieving clean and abundant energy for everyone,” said Carmichael Roberts, Breakthrough Energy Ventures. “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.”
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,” said Dennis Whyte, Director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center. “We look forward to collaborating with Type One Energy to realize the advantages of HTS high-field fusion magnets to their stellarator technology.”
“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,” said Tina Tosukhowong, Investment Director at TDK Ventures.
Appoints new CEO
In addition to the investment, Type One Energy will onboard Christofer Mowry, the former Breakthrough Energy Ventures’ (BEV) Senior Advisor on Fusion as its 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.
Type One Energy Group CEO Christofer Mowry said, “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.”
Sustainable, affordable fusion power available to all
Fusion energy is the clean power at the centre of stars and its unique advantages will rapidly disrupt carbon-based fuels to become the primary form of baseload power on the planet. A stellarator fusion power system is a type of magnetic confinement fusion device designed to create and maintain a plasma at the high temperatures and pressures necessary for nuclear fusion to occur.
One of the advantages of a stellarator is that it can operate continuously without the need for frequent plasma disruptions and restarts, which can limit the efficiency of other fusion devices.
Type One Energy was founded in Madison, Wisconsin in 2019 by Randall Volberg, David Anderson, Dr. John Canik, Chris Hegna, and Brian Matthews, who are among the world’s leading stellarator experts. Its unique FusionDirect commercialisation program takes advantage of recent important breakthroughs to pursue a lowest-risk, shortest-schedule pathway to fusion energy. This program is being executed through a set of global partnerships with leading fusion science and technology research institutions, universities and industrial companies.
The company applies proven advanced manufacturing methods, modern computational physics and high-field superconducting magnets to develop its optimised stellarator fusion energy system.
