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TAE Technologies, the Foothill Ranch, California-based company that metamorphosizes technologies to develop power from nuclear fusion, backed by Alphabet’s Google LLC., said later this week that the 23-year old privately-held company had raised a stark upsum of $280 million from existing alongside new investors including Google and New Enterprise Associate in a latest fundraising campaign.

TAE Technologies, the world’s largest private fusion energy company, has announced a landmark fusion technology milestone by producing stable plasma at 50M+ degrees Celsius in a proprietary compact reactor design that can scale to competitive fusion-generated power. This milestone furthers confidence in TAE’s path to commercialization and has aided the company in raising $280M in additional funding. When combined with prior rounds, TAE has now raised over $880M from some of the world’s most sophisticated investors.

The goal of economic power generation from fusion has been elusive, but that hasn’t deterred researchers from exploring ways to develop the technology in a way that would support commercial electricity production.
POWER magazine has covered the evolution of fusion research and development for many years, and nuclear experts now think we could be just years—not decades—away from commercial applications.

Michl Binderbauer, CEO of the privately funded alternative fusion developer TAE Technologies, applauds the report’s emphasis on public–private partnerships. “You are combining the strength of a DOE lab or university program with the end-product focus of the private sector,” he says, rather than the “more meandering” academic process. “A tighter adherence to schedules will help to drive efficiency in the process.”

Investments in private fusion ventures from billionaires, venture capital firms, philanthropists, and even oil and gas majors have grown in the past year. Measured by the amount of capital raised, TAE Technologies in Orange County, California, leads the pack at $750 million. That’s up by $150 million from early 2019, when named investors included the late former hedge fund manager Arthur Samberg, Charles Schwab, former Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack, venture capital firms New Enterprise Associates and Venrock, the UK’s Wellcome Trust, several sovereign funds, and Alphabet. CEO Michl Binderbauer says that list remains largely unchanged.