California-based fusion start-up Inertia Enterprises has announced a new $450m investment in a Series A funding round led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from additional firms including GV (Google Ventures), Modern Capital, Threshold Ventures, and others.
Inertia Enterprises was founded in 2024 to commercialise laser-based inertial fusion technology. Its origins are deeply rooted in the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). In December 2022, a team at LLNL’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) achieved “fusion ignition” for the first time, producing more energy from a fusion reaction than the laser energy used to spark it. Inertia was formed to scale this proven laboratory science into a viable commercial power plant.
The company was co-founded by Dr Andrea “Annie” Kritcher (Chief Scientist); (Chief Scientist); Professor Mike Dunne (Chief Technology Officer); and Jeff Lawson (CEO).
Dr Kritcher was the physicist at LLNL who was the lead designer for the 2022 ignition experiment. Under a unique agreement, she remains at LLNL while helping lead Inertia. She served as the lead designer of fusion experiments NIF since 2017 with than 20 years at LLNL. She led the development of the “Hybrid-E” inertial confinement fusion integrated physics design, including the hohlraum, capsule, and laser specifications and experimental design that led to the 2022 breakthrough.
Mike Dunne is professor at Stanford University and Associate Lab Director at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory where he served as the Director of the multi-billion-dollar Linac Coherent Light Source international research facility. He previously led a five-year programme at LLNL to create an industry-validated power plant design based on the lab’s ignition approach, working with over 70 vendors, utility companies, national labs, and universities. Prior to that, he oversaw development of the world’s most powerful lasers as Director of the UK’s Central Laser Facility.
Jeff Lawson is the tech entrepreneur and co-founder of Customer Engagement Platform Twilio. He left the software world to focus on transformative clean energy. “Inertia is building on decades of science and billions of dollars invested to reach the ignition milestone that proved the science,” he said. “Our plan is clear: build on proven science to develop the technology and supply chain required to deliver the world’s highest average power laser, the first fusion target assembly plant, and the first gigawatt, utility-scale fusion power plant to the grid. Inertia is building the team, partnerships, and capabilities to make this real within the next decade.”
Inertia was launched with a “first-of-its-kind” partnership with the Department of Energy DOE, licensing nearly 200 patents from LLNL to utilise their ignition technology. The company aims to break ground on its first grid-scale fusion power plant by 2030.
Inertia plans to build a fusion pilot plant based on the physics proven at NIF. The new funding will advance Inertia’s plans to build the world’s most powerful laser, Thunderwall, and a production line to mass manufacture fuel targets at scale. These technical tracks lay the foundation for Inertia to deliver grid-scale energy through a phased commercialisation roadmap.
“In just three years, we’ve gone from the first experiment to ever produce more fusion energy than was delivered to the target, to repeating that result many times and pushing the target gain higher. We’re now focused on translating physics we know works into a pathway toward commercial-scale fusion energy, and the real benefits it can deliver for people and the planet,” said Dr Kritcher.
“For the first time, the fusion industry is seeing the alignment of three elements crucial to commercialisation: proven physics, public sector partnerships, and private sector investment at the scale needed to deliver,” said Dunne. “It’s our job to capitalise on these elements to build fusion energy that works at grid scale.”
Thunderwall is the world’s first grid-scale fusion laser beamline delivering a 10 kJ beam 10 times per second with 10% wallplug efficiency using scalable semiconductor diode technology. Thunderwall’s performance will be 50 times as powerful (measured in average power) as any previous laser of its type. Coupled with mass manufacturing of targets based on Kritcher’s breakthrough design approach and a system that can feed those targets into chambers hit by the lasers in fractions of a second, Inertia will design and build a commercially viable, grid-scale fusion power plant.
Inertia said its laser will be made from billions of laser diodes and will be a million times more powerful than NIF, 20 times more efficient, and 1/10th the physical footprint. It will consist of thousands of smaller beams, all converging on the target simultaneously.
“These beamlines are the key to our scale-up of this technology: we will manufacture these laser units in a factory, fit them into the form factor of a shipping container, and treat them as modular, replaceable components in our system. By choosing a large number of modular beams instead of a small number of monolithic beams, we get incredible flexibility for plant operations and configuration. During our manufacturing pre-production phase over the next several years, we are constructing the prototype beamline at our facility in Livermore.”
Inertia also plans to build the world’s first fusion fuel target factory. “In today’s big science experiments, fusion fuel targets are hand-made, each one to unique specifications. These are prototypes which scientists test in the lab,” Inertia said. “However, like any product, once a prototype works, you scale up production in a factory. You employ larger batch sizes, automation, and amortise the cost over a very large number of units – trading manufacturing fidelity and speed of delivery within allowable tolerances. That’s exactly what Inertia is doing at our facility in Livermore.
The company added: “During our manufacturing pre-production phase over the next several years, we are building the world’s first assembly line for fusion targets. We are developing the key processes for each component of the target, as well as the assembly, fuelling, and injection steps needed for fully scaled, low-cost production.”
Finally, “As we develop our mass-produced laser units and targets, we are simultaneously developing an integrated and fully consistent power plant design. We are leveraging years and nearly a hundred million dollars spent to research and validate the fusion power plant design with plant operators. So after completing prototypes of both our manufacturable unit laser and our fuel target production line, we will scale up both of these into a gigawatt, utility-scale fusion power plant during the 2030s.”
This plant will harness the fusion energy produced by the 10 MJ laser operating at 10 Hz, turning heat into steam, which then drives a turbine. The inputs to the fusion plant are water and about a dozen Electric vehicles worth of lithium a year, and its only emissions are helium. It breeds its own fuel, and all other components are continually recycled. According to Inertia: “This first-of-a-kind plant will not be optimised for cost, but will demonstrate the full end-to-end energy generation capability and set the stage for the lower-cost commercial facilities to follow.”
