Hello and welcome to the Strawman. Call us the David Attenborough of daily newsletters because we’re here to keep you informed and entertained.

Today we’re taking a look at the latest in Fusion funding, with a couple of new exciting companies and the approach they’re taking to get us to theoretically unlimited energy.

Piece of the Pie

As a recap, Fusion is the same physical process that keeps the sun blazing hot and in your face. Two light atoms (like Hydrogen) merge together to form a heavier atom and in the process they release and harness energy. Just like your hype man, fusion comes with 100% Good Energy (aka no pollutants).

We’ve been trying to harness this process for decades now but the last couple of years have seen a number of breakthroughs getting us closer to that sweet sweet unlimited energy.

Last time we covered Fusion it was Helion’s partnership with Microsoft that took the centre stage but today we’re digging deeper in to the upstarts working in the space. This week, the US government announced $46m of seed funding in 8 different nuclear fusion companies. Word is that the U.S. government’s been reading the Strawman and now they want a piece of the pie…

To be clear, it’s not a lot of money just yet but The Energy Department’s Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program is aiming to help these companies demonstrate pilot-scale fusion within the coming decade. As part of this mission, they’ve committed to a further $415m of funding depending on the milestones the companies hit.

Realta Recognise Real

One of the companies on the receiving end of the funding was Realta who received $3m from the programme alongside $9m from seed investors Khosla Ventures.

Realta is particularly interesting as it’s focusing in on harnessing not just the electrical energy from fusion but also the heat energy, taking full advantage of the unlimited power. (hint: remember the sun?)

Aside from the heat output, fusion is also not a process you can easily turn on and off, if you’re keeping it on you better be harnessing it. Realta’s specifically interested in use-cases such as industrial manufacturing which require high uptime and often need processes to be heated up - a perfect fit for fusion.

Some critics doubt that large scale fusion is even feasible but Realta’s aiming to leverage new technology advancements to get to an industrial-scale demo by early 2030. We’ll be along for the ride while these smart folks figure it out.

Until next time,

The Strawman