Cambridge Heavy Industries, a startup operating near MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been developing a small, laser-powered fusion device. Unlike larger fusion facilities, this device is designed to fit on a tabletop, allowing for rapid experimentation.
Yun Kai, co-founder and CEO of Cambridge Heavy Industries, stated that the small, modular nature of the reactor enables 50 to 80 experiments or "shots" per day. Data from these experiments will be used to feed AI simulations to optimise the design.
The startup recently secured $6.2 million in seed funding. Azolla Ventures led the round, with participation from Overlay, Neta Foundation, P3A, MassCEC, and the Rothrock family.
Cambridge Heavy's reactor uses two main lasers to compress a fuel target, generating heat and a magnetic field to achieve fusion. This concept originated from the lab of Keith Nelson, an MIT chemist, where researchers studied materials under extreme conditions using laser pulses.
In the near term, Cambridge Heavy plans to use its smaller devices to produce tritium, a rare hydrogen isotope used by most fusion power plants currently in development. The company aims to develop a power plant from this concept in approximately a decade, which would be about the size of two basketball courts.