Fusion startup Type One Energy raises $200M to build a power plant by 2034

The round was co-led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the Bill Gates-backed fund and a repeat investor, and Clutterbuck Capital.

New investors include Lowercarbon Capital, co-founded by early Uber backer Chris Sacca, Siemens Energy Ventures and SiteGround Capital, according to Reuters.

The total: Reuters reports the round takes Type One's total funding past $400 million. Citing PitchBook data, it said this is the third-biggest Series B in the fusion sector over the last five years. TechCrunch says the company had previously raised at least $82.5 million. Type One didn't disclose its valuation.

"The breadth and quality of investors in this funding round demonstrates growing support for our strategy to industrialize the commercial deployment of fusion energy," CEO Christofer Mowry said in a statement, according to Heatmap.

About half a power plant, according to the company.

Mowry told TechCrunch the Series B should get Type One halfway to paying for its 400 MW commercial plant. If the company can bring it online by 2034, he said, it could finish its first plant with less capital than many competitors, even with one or more later funding rounds.

The money will also help develop the technology, including an engineering prototype machine called Infinity One, Mowry told Reuters.

"It's not an experimental science project... the only thing that we want to learn is that our design for the fusion machine in the power plant works as advertised," he said.

The commercial plant is called Infinity Two. Both sit under Type One's Project Infinity at Bull Run in Tennessee.

Type One's pitch is its business model, not just its reactor.

Design, don't manufacture: the company designs the power plant and many of its components, then turns to a "bespoke" network of suppliers chosen for the project to build them, Mowry told TechCrunch. Most fusion startups rely on suppliers for some parts, but Type One plans to go further.

"The amount of capital that we need to raise to commercialize fusion at Type One is just a different order of magnitude than if you were going to be vertically integrated," Mowry said.

"Why would I want to spend on bricks and mortar?" he added. "I used to run a big nuclear manufacturing company. That's expensive."

Bigger partners: the approach gives Type One access to companies with more expertise in some areas. Infrastructure consultant AECOM is working on engineering for Infinity Two. "They have 10,000 people, most of them are engineers of one kind. We're never going to have 10,000 people," Mowry said.

Type One has already lined up partners, according to TechCrunch:

• Tennessee Valley Authority: Type One will build its first two fusion devices on TVA's Bull Run site.
• AECOM: engineering for the Infinity Two power plant.
• Commonwealth Fusion Systems: the competitor has licensed its high-temperature superconducting magnet technology to Type One, which will form the backbone of the reactor design.
• Siemens: Type One aims to work toward a manufacturing partnership, Reuters reports.

"The Series B financing enables us to remain focused on advancing our stellarator technology and Project Infinity design activities," Mowry said, according to Heatmap.

Type One is building a stellarator, a type of fusion reactor that uses complex magnetic fields to contain superheated plasma, Reuters explains.

Most fusion designs are tokamaks, shaped like a doughnut. TechCrunch has described a stellarator as more like a cronut: still a ring, but warped and bulging. The shape of the magnets creates the specially shaped field that holds the plasma, where hydrogen atoms collide and fuse, releasing huge amounts of energy.

The concept isn't new, but it takes a lot of computing power to get the design right. Type One was spun out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which operates a stellarator, TechCrunch reported in 2024. The world's largest stellarator, Wendelstein 7-X, is in Germany.

The company has grown fast from a small seed round.

Early money: Type One raised $29 million in 2023, then a $53.5 million extension in 2024 led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, with Australia's Foxglove Ventures and New Zealand's GD1 participating, TechCrunch reported at the time. That brought its total to about $82.5 million.

The CEO: Mowry joined early in 2023. "Given the rate at which we want to accelerate, we needed a larger quantum of capital," he told TechCrunch then. "We weren't going to get there with your prototypical $20 million, $30 million, $40 million seed round."

Computing and magnets: in 2024, Type One had a partnership with Oak Ridge National Laboratory for supercomputer access to refine its design, and was working with MIT on stellarator magnet research, separate from MIT's work with Commonwealth Fusion Systems, TechCrunch reported.

Supply chain: this March, Heatmap reported a deal for Type One to start securing the material needed for its reactors.

Siemens' view: the deal strengthens Siemens Energy's position in fusion "as we continue to explore the technologies and collaborations that can help advance commercialization," Enrique Gonzalez Zanetich, a partner at Siemens Energy Ventures, said in a statement, according to Reuters.

Leaning on suppliers makes Type One what's called an integrator, a company that assembles a product from parts made by others.

That limits its risk from activities like manufacturing, but it adds another kind: less control over suppliers than an in-house team would have, TechCrunch notes.

The best-known recent example is Boeing, which relied on Spirit AeroSystems for fuselage sections of the 737 and 787. After a series of quality-control failures, including a door plug blowing out on an Alaska Airlines flight in 2024, Boeing bought Spirit to bring it in-house.

Mowry argues the trade-off is worth it. "These business models are successful because they let companies focus on managing risk and developing a high level of competency in their slice of the value chain," he said.

Fusion has been researched for decades. A wave of companies has launched in recent years as advances in magnets, computing and materials raised hopes that fusion could one day provide abundant clean power, Reuters notes.

But it's expensive. Fusion sits at the cutting edge of plasma physics, materials science and advanced computing, and even $200 million doesn't always go far, TechCrunch says.

• If you follow clean energy: another well-funded fusion company now has a 2034 target for a commercial plant in the US Southeast.
• If you live in Tennessee: the Bull Run site is becoming a fusion hub, with Type One's first two devices planned there.
• If you're skeptical of fusion timelines: fair. No company has yet delivered fusion power to the grid, and 2034 is a goal, not a guarantee.