Type One Energy, a Knoxville, Tennessee-based startup founded in 2019 to build fusion power plants, announced on Tuesday that it has raised $200 million from investors.
The Series B round should get the company halfway to paying for a 400-megawatt commercial power plant, CEO Christofer Mowry told TechCrunch. If Type One can bring the plant online by 2034, Mowry said, it could complete its first power plant using less capital than many competitors, even with one or more subsequent funding rounds.
Mowry said the company's business model is to design the power plant and many of its components, then turn to a bespoke network of suppliers chosen for the project to build them. Most fusion startups rely on suppliers for some components, but Type One plans to go further.
"The amount of capital that we need to raise to commercialize fusion at Type One is just a different order of magnitude than if you were going to be vertically integrated," Mowry said, referring to companies that make most of their own parts in-house.
Type One will build its first two fusion devices on the Tennessee Valley Authority's Bull Run site, and infrastructure consultant AECOM is working on engineering for Infinity Two, the initial commercial power plant. Competitor Commonwealth Fusion Systems has licensed its high-temperature superconducting magnet technology to Type One.
The round was led by repeat investor Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Clutterbuck Capital, with participation from Lowercarbon Capital, Siemens Energy Ventures, and SiteGround Capital. The company had previously raised at least $82.5 million.