Google Backs TAE Technologies with $150 Million Investment in Fusion Power

Google places another fusion power bet on TAE Technologies | TechCrunch

Nobody said that commercializing fusion power would be cheap or quick. TAE Technologies said this week it raised another $150 million in a funding round that included investments from existing backers Google, Chevron, and New Enterprise associates. By the nearly 30-year-old company's counting, it's TAE's twelfth round of investment. To date, it has raised about $1.8 billion, according to PitchBook, making it one of the highest funded fusion companies. TAE, formerly known as Tri Alpha Energy, worked for years in stealth developing its reactor design. The company initially used a process that started by firing two plasma balls at each other and then spinning the resulting blob with particle beams. The plasma blob -- which looks like a hollow cigar -- generates its own magnetic field, working alongside the reactors magnets to keep the plasma contained. In April, the company announced it no longer needed to fire two plasma balls to kick off a reaction. Instead, it was able to form a plasma, heat it, and stabilize it using the particle beams alone. Eliminating that equipment makes the reactor smaller, cheaper, and easier to operate, TAE said. Google has participated in two rounds of investment in TAE; the previous $250 million round closed in 2022. The tech company has been working with TAE for longer. Since 2014, Google computer scientists have worked with engineers at TAE to use machine learning (a form of AI) to find the ideal settings for a fusion device. Before AI, the optimization process used to take two months -- "about 1,000 experiments," TAE CEO Michl Binderbauer told me in 2022. AI cut that down significantly, reducing the number of experiments by two orders of magnitude, which could be completed in a few hours. Today, TAE's reactor can create plasmas heated to 70 million degrees C. For its commercial device, the company says it needs to heat plasmas to 1 billion degrees C. Binderbauer told Axios that he is aiming to raise another $50 million before the round closes later this summer. The company is hoping to put electrons on the grid sometime in the early 2030s.

Google bets big on TAE's cost-effective nuclear fusion reactor

Founded in 1998, TAE Technologies has been working towards making clean fusion energy cheaper. Alongside fusion, the company is also working on innovations that support intelligent power management systems and next-generation treatment for cancer patients. On June 2, TAE announced that its latest funding round to develop a clean and safe approach to commercial fusion has raised more than $150 million. The funds raised in the round exceeded the company's initial target. The company also stated that it has the option to raise additional capital as part of this funding round. It has raised over $1.3 billion in equity capital since inception, according to the company. Earlier this year, TAE announced a major milestone that fundamentally advances the performance, practicality and reactor-readiness of its proprietary fusion technology. Michl Binderbauer, CEO of TAE Technologies, said that nuclear fusion has the potential to transform the energy landscape, providing near-limitless clean power at a time when the world's energy needs are growing exponentially due to the growth of AI and data centers.