(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.
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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