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Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), a nuclear fusion startup spun out of MIT, just raised the biggest-ever funding round for a nuclear-fusion company—a financial milestone that it hopes will spark a scientific one.
CFS announced a $1.8 billion round on Wednesday, led by (who else?) Tiger Global Management and Bill Gates. That’s more than 3x bigger than the previous record of $500 million, which was set by Helion…a month ago.
CFS, which has now raised ~$4 billion since its 2018 founding, will use the money to try and build a net-energy-producing demonstration reactor by 2025.
Reminder: Energy-producing nuclear fusion has been an elusive, but captivating, goal since Soviet scientists developed the first fusion device, dubbed a “tokamak,” in the 1950s.
- In theory, fusion can produce significantly higher quantities of clean energy with far less waste and risk than fission.
- One problem? No one has been able to produce more energy from a fusion reactor than it takes to create a reaction.
But the record-breaking rounds from CFS and Helion are simply two eye-popping examples of an increasingly energetic nuclear-fusion industry. There are currently 35+ businesses operating in the space, per the Fusion Industry Association, more than double the 15 in 2017. Another fusion company, General Fusion, also raised a $130 million round this week.
Looking ahead: CFS also said it will begin working on a commercial fusion plant that would produce electricity early next decade. Some fusion experts think it’ll take much longer, though: Tony Donné, program manager at research consortium EUROfusion, told the WSJ that fusion power probably won’t make it to the grid for another two or three decades.