Inertia Enterprises has raised $450 million to build one of the world’s most powerful lasers, which it hopes will serve as the foundation of a grid-scale power plant that the fusion startup plans to start building in 2030. Inertia Enterprises is based on technology developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility (NIF). NIF is the site of the world’s only controlled fusion reactions that have reached a scientific peak, where the reaction releases more energy than it took to start.
The Series A was led by Bessemer Venture Partners with participation from GV, Modern Capital, Threshold Ventures and others. Inertia’s co-founders include Jeff Lawson, who founded Twilio and is its CEO. Annie Kritcher, who led the successful experiments at NIF. and Mike Dunne, a Stanford professor who helped Lawrence Livermore develop a NIF-based power plant design. Kritcher remained in her position at Lawrence Livermore.
The NIF experiments were a key milestone on the road to the widespread diffusion of fusion power. However, significant progress must be made before a fusion power plant can deliver electricity to the grid. For Inertia, that means building a laser capable of delivering 10 kilojoules 10 times a second.
The launch reactor relies on a form of fusion known as inertial confinement. In Inertia’s flavor of inertial confinement, lasers bombard a fuel target, compressing the fuel until the atoms inside fuse and release energy. The technique is based on NIF designs, in which laser light is converted into X-rays inside the target. X-rays are what ultimately heat and compress the fuel pellet.
Each of Inertia’s power plants will require 1,000 of its lasers that bombard 4.5mm targets that cost less than $1 each to mass produce. In contrast, the NIF system uses 192 lasers for firing painstakingly crafted goals that take dozens of hours to complete. Inertia is betting that by using the same basic principles as NIF and applying a more commercial mindset, it can dramatically reduce costs.
Inertia’s new round is the latest in a series of funding announcements by fusion startups in recent months. With this round and others, fusion startups have attracted over $10 billion in investment. And at least a dozen companies have raised more than $100 million.
Last week, Avalanche said it had raised $29 million to advance its desktop-sized fusion reactor. Earlier this year, Type One Energy told TechCrunch that it had attracted $87 million in investment ahead of a $250 million Series B it is currently raising. Last summer, Commonwealth Fusion Systems raised $863 million from dozens of investors, including Google, Nvidia and Breakthrough Energy Ventures.
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Two fusion companies recently announced that they will go public through reverse mergers. General Fusion said in January it would merge with acquirer Spring Valley III in a deal that values the combined company at $1 billion. General Fusion has previously struggled to raise money from private investors. Earlier last month, TAE Technologies announced that it would merge with Donald Trump’s social media company, Trump Media & Technology Group. the company’s total value would be $6 billion, according to the all-stock transaction.
