Type One Energy Series B closes at $200M with a fusion licence in hand

Infinity One is the prototype stage of Project Infinity, which the Type One Energy Series B supports

(Image courtesy of Type One Energy)

The Type One Energy Series B has closed at $200 million, co-led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Clutterbuck Capital, with Siemens Energy Ventures among the participants. It arrives five weeks after Tennessee issued the company the first fusion-specific licence in the United States. The proceeds fund the FusionDirect development programme and Project Infinity, which includes the 400 MWe Infinity Two stellarator plant at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Bull Run site.

Siemens Energy Ventures joins the Type One Energy Series B

Breakthrough Energy Ventures returns as a backer, having led Type One’s first financing in 2023 alongside TDK Ventures and Doral Energy-Tech Ventures, and it now co-leads the Series B with Clutterbuck Capital.

Lowercarbon Capital, Siemens Energy Ventures and SiteGround Capital come in as new investors alongside other new backers. Siemens Energy Ventures Partner Enrique Gonzalez Zanetich pointed to Type One’s execution-focused approach and its industry and research network as the foundation for a commercially viable energy product.

In Type One’s reading, the investor mix in the Type One Energy Series B supports its partner-based OEM model, with strategic industrial investors sitting alongside climate and technology funds. Under that model, established energy companies supply the manufacturing, engineering and operating capability that Type One would otherwise have to build itself. The announcement presents the structure as a way to cut development costs, risks and timelines.

The Series B follows Tennessee’s fusion licence

Type One submitted its plans to the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) in January, and the state issued its first fusion-specific licence at the end of August, under a framework that had taken effect in June.

TDEC’s licence announcement said Type One intends to break ground on the first phase of Project Infinity this year, with full startup expected by 2034. Its June notice on the new rules said construction of the Infinity Two power plant, in close coordination with TVA, could begin in 2028.

Alongside the Tennessee work, Type One is progressing a second commercial deployment project through the UK Infinity Fusion Consortium, with Tokamak Energy, AECOM, Sheffield Forgemasters and Barclays.

Fuel cycle work across Tennessee and the UK

Type One’s strategy rests on the position that the main obstacles to commercial stellarators are now engineering and industrial rather than questions of plasma physics, and Carmichael Roberts of Breakthrough Energy Ventures made a similar case, saying the task has shifted from discovery to deployment.

In August, Oak Ridge National Laboratory licensed four cryogenic pellet fuelling inventions to Type One, among them a tritium-compatible gas gun and a screw extruder, and ORNL states that no current pellet injector can produce pellets at the rates a deuterium-tritium reactor requires. It describes the licensed extrusion system as capable of rates suited to reactor operation.

The mid-September Tennessee, TVA and UK partnership builds on Project Infinity and the UK consortium, and it lists tritium handling, lithium enrichment and breeding blanket materials among the areas the partners will explore, alongside utility, developer and investor engagement on siting, interconnection and offtake planning. Type One presents its partner-based structure as what allows several plant projects to run concurrently, with the UK consortium as the second project now under way.

Stay ahead in the fusion revolution explore more breakthroughs from leading innovators in clean energy technology.