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Realta Fusion has closed a $36 million series A round led by Future Ventures, the firm of Tesla and SpaceX backer Steve Jurvetson. 

Why it matters: Fusion startups are racing to hit technical milestones to raise financing and one day commercialize the moonshot clean energy tech. 

Zoom in: New participating investors include Mayfield, GSBackers, SiteGround, and Avila VC. Existing investors that participated include Khosla Ventures, Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, and TitletownTech. 

The funding will help the company validate its plasma simulations, continue work on the Wisconsin High-field Axisymmetric Mirror (WHAM) fusion device built with the University of Wisconsin, and do design engineering for a fusion device dubbed Anvil. 

Realta plans to kick off a Series B round in the next 18 to 24 months that would fund building Anvil, with a plan to have it operational by 2028, says Realta Fusion co-founder and CEO Kieran Furlong. The raise is targeted at between $100 million to $200 million.

How it works: Realta uses super strong magnets, currently sourced from Commonwealth Fusion Systems, to hold hydrogen gas between two ends of a cylinder. The hydrogen atoms collide and fuse together, creating energy. 

The design is called magnetic mirror fusion and it was previously developed via the WHAM experiment. 

Other fusion designs include the tokamak that Commonwealth is developing, and laser fusion.

The intrigue: Advocates of the magnetic mirror design say it can be built in a more modular and scalable way, compared to designs like the tokamak, potentially lowering the cost of deploying it. 

Future Ventures co-founder and partner Maryanna Saenko told Axios that the firm was attracted to the simplicity of Realta's design and that its 50 MW initial target size could open up a lot of new markets. Future Ventures also has backed Commonwealth.

Catch up quick: Realta closed a seed round from Khosla Ventures in 2023. 

The WHAM experiment was backed by $10 million from the Department of Energy's ARPA-E program.

Realta spun out of the WHAM project in 2022, led by University of Wisconsin professors Jay Anderson, Cary Forest, Oliver Schmitz and Ben Lindley.

The big picture: Nuclear fusion, and its promise of near-limitless zero-emissions electricity, has been in development for a century and is not a commercial technology.

Over the past several years, venture interest has grown in the sector, and companies like Commonwealth, Helion, and Pacific Fusion have raised major rounds.

There has been close to $13 billion in private and public funding for fusion companies over the years, according to FusionX, a fusion research and events group.

What's next: Realta will be heads down proving its design is as de-risked as possible before going out for its Series B. 

Realta Fusion lands $36M for magnetic mirror fusion

Fusion startups are racing to hit milestones to raise financing.

An overhead view of the Wisconsin High-field Axisymmetric Mirror (or WHAM) experiment, a fusion device.

The WHAM fusion device. Photo: Elliot Claveau/Realta Fusion

Realta Fusion has closed a $36 million series A round led by Future Ventures, the firm of Tesla and SpaceX backer Steve Jurvetson. Why it matters: Fusion startups are racing to hit technical milestones to raise financing and one day commercialize the moonshot clean energy tech.

Realta Fusion lands $36M for magnetic mirror fusion

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