US start-up Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) has raised $1bn of additional equity financing. This is the single largest funding round among fusion energy companies worldwide since CFS announced its $1.8bn Series B round in 2021. With this capital, and the $863m the company raised last year, CFS has now raised a total of $4bn – about 30% of the total capital raised by the fusion industry to-date.
CFS will use the funds raised to further accelerate its progress to commercialisation. In parallel with completing the assembly of its SPARC fusion demonstration machine, CFS is continuing to develop, what it intends to be the world’s first grid-scale fusion power plant, ARC, at the company’s Fall Line Fusion Power Station in Chesterfield County, Virginia.
SPARC does not stand for a rigid, word-for-word technical acronym, but is instead a play on words derived from its commercial successor, ARC. Specifically, SPARC represents the Soonest/Smallest Possible ARC – ARC stands for Affordable, Robust, Compact. ARC is the commercial, grid-scale 400 MWe power plant designed to deliver clean energy to utility companies.
SPARC is a pilot tokamak reactor that is currently roughly 75-80% structurally complete. The team is completing the installation of 18 large 20-tesla high-temperature superconducting magnets to achieve first plasma. CFS intends to utilise SPARC to cross the critical “scientific breakeven” threshold generating more energy from a fusion reaction than it takes to heat the plasma by 2027.
Having become the first fusion company to submit an application to PJM Interconnection, the largest wholesale electricity market in the US, CFS aims to put power on the grid in the early 2030s, bolstered by strategic partnerships with Dominion Energy as well as Google and Eni, two investors in CFS that also signed power purchase agreements (PPAs) to buy more than half the power the plant will produce.
“CFS is making what once was impossible into inevitable. In the 2030s, we will put commercial fusion on the grid,” said Bob Mumgaard, CFS CEO & Co-founder. “We have the science that works and the proven execution that’s consistently validated by the market. We regularly welcome investors from around the world to our headquarters in Devens, Massachusetts, where they see real and tangible progress as we ready support systems and finalise the assembly of SPARC. In unlocking commercial fusion energy, we’re on a path to make an impact at a civilisational level.”
