The future of energy just got a massive boost from Silicon Valley’s biggest players. Nuclear fusion company Commonwealth Fusion Systems announced on Aug. 28 that it secured $863 million in Series B2 funding, with AI giant Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) joining as a first-time investor.
The oversubscribed round attracted heavyweight backers including Google, Bill Gates‘s Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Laurene Powell Jobs‘s Emerson Collective, Khosla Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, and Tiger Global. New investors also include Morgan Stanley’s (NYSE:MS) Counterpoint Global, billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller, and a consortium of 12 Japanese companies led by Mitsubishi and Mitsui.
“Between the investment, the execution, the science, the transparency, the collaboration, it’s really showing that CFS is the leader here inside the fusion ecosystem,” CFS co-founder and CEO Bob Mumgaard said during a press conference, according to Inc.
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This funding round represents one of the largest deep tech investments since CFS’s previous $1.8 billion Series B in 2021. The company says it has now raised nearly $3 billion total, representing about one-third of all capital invested in private fusion companies worldwide.
Nuclear fusion generates electricity by combining atoms, mimicking the process that powers the sun. Mumgaard describes the technology as creating a “star in a jar,” according to Inc. Unlike current nuclear power plants that rely on atom splitting, or nuclear fission, fusion technology combines atoms to create energy with significantly less radioactive waste.
“To meet the challenges of this century, we need energy that is abundant, clean, and accessible everywhere. That’s what fusion offers,” Powell Jobs said in the CFS statement.
The technology promises to generate much greater energy output than fission while producing smaller quantities of shorter-lived radioactive waste, according to the Department of Energy. However, fusion remains in development and is still years away from commercial viability.
Massachusetts-based CFS plans to use the new funding to complete its Sparc demonstrator plant, targeting operation by 2026 and net energy production by 2027. The company also aims to develop its Virginia-based commercial plant, ARC, for operation by the early 2030s.
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The massive investment reflects growing concern about power demands from AI and data centers, Inc. says. Google has already agreed to purchase 200 megawatts of electricity from CFS’s ARC plant once operational, representing half of the plant’s total output. Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) struck a similar deal with competitor Helion, while Amazon’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) Jeff Bezos personally backed Canadian company General Fusion.
