While some fusion companies may be hit with rough patches, Realta Fusion is knocking down the trend with a new funding round that allows them to complete the design of the Anvil prototype reactor.
“By the end of the series’ investment period, we said, ‘Hey, we have the design. We’re ready to build Anvil,'” Realta co-founder and CEO Kieran Furlong told TechCrunch.
The company hopes to make the next progress this year, so it can pitch investors to Series B.
Realta has repeatedly participated from other investors including Avila VC, Gsbackers, Khosla Ventures, Mayfield, Siteground, Titletowntech and Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, raising $36 million in rounds led by future ventures.
The startup previously raised $9 million in a seed round led by Khosla Ventures. Last summer, it turned the switch over with a pair of magnets and set a record of the magnetic field that traps the plasma within two weeks.
Fusion has long been proposed as a clean energy source, but so far only one experiment has been able to hit the major milestone known as the scientific break-even. The results were far below what scientists would expect to see a commercially available fusion power plant demand.
Still, many scientists and engineers are optimistic that commercial fusion power plants will be viable one day in the next decade. Realta is in it.
Startups are looking to lower it to $40 per megawatt hour to improve their technology, and hope to build a power plant cheap enough to initially power it at $100 per megawatt hour. Today, the most efficient natural gas power plants cost around $45-105 per megawatt hour to build and operate, according to Lazard.
Rialta graduated from the University of Wisconsin three years ago. Since then, the team, now 18, has worked with university scientists to develop the nuclear reactor concept that has been discussed for decades.
The concept known as a magnetoscope limits the plasma to a symmetrical bottle shape. The powerful magnets at each end pinch high-energy particles known as plasma and push them back towards the center. The magnetic field expands towards the center, and weaker magnets help form the central plasma cylinder. To scale reactor power, the company should be cheaper to manufacture due to stronger magnets.
If the magnet works as expected, the plasma reaches very high temperatures for long enough that the particles begin to fuse together, releasing enormous amounts of energy in the process.
Realta is one of a handful of fusion startups that have emerged in Wisconsin in recent years. With data center energy demands rising in regions, including Microsoft facilities near Foxconn’s infamous project, politicians in Badger state have begun to reflect on laws seducing the nuclear industry.
“The state legislature is definitely paying attention,” Furlong said. “We spoke to both sides and I think this is a bipartisan job opportunity here.”
Ultimately, Realta and other fusion industries will need to turn their muscles into muscle for the next few years to make plans come true, and if everything goes well, fusion power is viable.
“We had a Gartner hype cycle. We’re now on the other side,” Furlong said, referring to the tech industry theory that outlines the adoption and acceptance of new technologies.
“What we want to avoid is that some companies will blow up brilliantly and ruin it for other industries,” he said. “We hope everyone succeeds. We all want to succeed in fusion. I think we all recognize that there are 40 or 50 companies that we are working on that right now. Obviously, not all of them will survive.”