Fusion energy startup Realta Fusion announced an oversubscribed $36 million Series A round to bring its compact, scalable, modular magnetic mirror fusion technology closer to commercialization.
Future Ventures led the round with participation from Mayfield, GSBackers, SiteGround, Avila VC, and other investors. Existing Realta Fusion investors Khosla Ventures, Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, and TitletownTech also participated in the round.
“This funding allows us to validate our plasma simulations using real-world experimental data, bringing us dramatically closer to making fusion energy real,” said Realta Fusion CEO Kieran Furlong. “From there we will design a prototype fusion device that is as de-risked as you can get it, before we actually go build it. We aim to have it operating by 2028.”
Realta Fusion’s device is a compact, scalable, modular fusion energy system, which offers the lowest cost and shortest pathway to commercial fusion energy. Realta Fusion’s energy system is designed to deliver industrial heat and power on-site for a wide range of applications, including data centers, chemical plants, metal recycling, remote mining, and other heavy industry.
The system is based on the compact magnetic mirror concept, in which extremely strong magnets trap super-heated hydrogen gas between two ends of a simple cylinder. Hydrogen atoms within the cylinder collide and fuse together, releasing massive amounts of carbon-free energy that can be delivered as heat or electricity.
“As one of the few fusion startups that have demonstrated an actual operating plasma, they can be one of the leaders in this space,” said Future Ventures co-founder Steve Jurvetson.
With this funding, Realta Fusion will advance the physics of the experimental magnetic mirror fusion device currently operating at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and support the engineering and design of their own prototype CoSMo fusion energy system. Additionally, the company will continue to grow its team and complete plans for The Realta Forge – a purpose-built fusion R&D facility.
Realta Fusion spun out of an experiment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy. The experiment was the first to use high temperature superconducting magnets in a magnetic mirror configuration and confined its first plasma at a world-record breaking magnetic field strength of 17 Tesla.
