Yahoo Finance Gates-Backed Fusion Power Startup Type One Raises $53.5 Million
(Bloomberg) -- Fusion startup Type One Energy Group has raised another $53.5 million to develop commercial power plants using the same process that lights up stars.
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The round was led by Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures, GD1 from New Zealand and Centaurus Capital. It adds to $29 million in funding the company received last year from Breakthrough as well as TDK Ventures and Doral Energy Tech Ventures.
Type One’s technology will use powerful magnets to control a superheated cloud of plasma and harness fusion, which fuses atoms together rather than split them apart. Chief Executive Officer Chris Mowry said the new funding will help the company — based in Oak Ridge, Tennessee — complete the first phase of its power plant design by mid-2025 and test advanced magnets. A commercial power plant, however, remains years away.
“The physics of fusion is pretty hard, even though the concept is simple” Mowry said in an interview. “It will be the mid-2030s when we can put fusion electrons on the grid.”
Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP, is an investor in Breakthrough Energy Ventures.
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