U.S. Nuclear Fusion Startup Raises $450 Million to Target Commercial Power Plant Launch by 2030

American fusion energy startup Inertia Enterprises raised $450 million in its latest funding round, claiming the funds will be used to develop laser fusion power plants.

Inertia’s Series A funding was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Threshold Ventures, Long Journey Ventures, and Alphabet’s investment arm GV (formerly Google Ventures).

Inertia plans to begin construction of commercial nuclear power plants by 2030. The company also intends to build a laser manufacturing facility and a production line to supply micro fuel pellets made from special materials. Through laser bombardment, these pellets will be able to trigger fusion reactions.

Analysts believe that the latest funding reflects growing market interest in fusion energy. According to a report released last July by the US Fusion Industry Association, the industry has attracted over $9.7 billion in investments by mid-2022.

Since then, large-scale funding continues to emerge. In August last year, Commonwealth Fusion Systems announced the completion of $863 million in financing.

It is worth noting that although fusion is regarded as an almost inexhaustible clean energy source, the technology still faces significant engineering and physical challenges, and no company has yet demonstrated a commercially viable system.

Inertia was founded in August last year and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. The company is dedicated to commercializing the “laser fusion” technology.

A press release at the time stated that the company had established substantial multi-faceted collaborations with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), including signing research agreements to advance the design and manufacturing of low-cost, large-scale target materials.

Nuclear fusion power mainly involves two technical approaches. As mentioned earlier, Commonwealth is a leader in the magnetic confinement route, which uses strong magnetic fields to confine plasma and control fusion reactions within a “magnetic cage.”

Inertia has chosen another path—“laser inertial confinement”—which uses lasers to compress deuterium-tritium fuel pellets, achieving fusion ignition within the high-density fuel plasma’s inertial confinement time.

A report from Caixin mentioned that LLNL’s experiments confirmed the feasibility of the laser inertial confinement approach. In 2022, LLNL achieved the first controlled nuclear fusion experiment where the energy produced exceeded the laser energy used to drive the fusion.

At that time, the US Department of Energy regarded this ignition as a milestone breakthrough toward commercial fusion power. In July 2023, LLNL’s experiments not only demonstrated a second net energy gain but achieved even higher net energy.

Bessemer Ventures partner Byron Deeter stated that Inertia’s technological approach and its professional team give it an advantage, “most of the scientific risks have been significantly reduced—although not completely eliminated, they are indeed greatly lowered.”

LLNL’s laser systems are about the size of three football fields, making them unsuitable for commercialization. Therefore, Inertia is developing a new generation of lasers. CEO Jeff Lawson said that their power will be a million times greater than current devices.

Inertia plans to deploy 1,000 lasers in future commercial power plants, firing about ten laser beams per second—each producing thrust fifteen times greater than SpaceX’s Falcon rocket launches.

(Source: Caixin)