US fusion venture, Shine Technologies, has joined MARIE, a consortium that is working to build US nuclear fuel recycling capability, agreeing to work with Newcleo to link Shine's recycling capabilities with Newcleo's reactors, which are designed to run on recycled fuel.
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We are pleased to share that Focused Energy has announced that it struck an important financing deal and raised $240 Million for its continued development of laser-based inertial fusion energy (LIFE). Funding has come from predominantly from RWE AG, one of Germany's largest utilities; SPRIND, Germany's official federal agency for breakthrough innovation; the European Innovation Council Fund; and Prime Movers Lab, the U.S.-based venture fund that had provided the lead backing for Focused Energy's earlier fund-raises in the U.S.
There are many things to applaud about this announcement. A raise of $240 million in funding at one time may well represent the largest single haul achieved by a fusion team pursuing laser inertial fusion. A considerable aspect to this successful funding reflects powerful state aspirations by Germany to be the country that leads in fusion energy development and its selection of Focused Energy to invest into. It places RWE, a major German utility, as a key strategic and industrial partner, which gives Focused Energy access to the Biblis site, where there's an existing but retired RWE power plant that can potentially help accelerate a future deployment, as well as access to RWE's construction and operational experience. RWE could also become a future customer of fusion energy from Focused Energy.
There are, however, a number of aspects to this funding announcement that we find disingenous and don't cheer. This financing comes amidst a series of major changes for Focused, and appears to have required that the company re-domicile in Germany, which it has done. This poses interesting potential issues for the company's partnerships in the U.S. as well as its ability to raise future capital in the U.S. This move also takes Focused Energy far away from the National Ignition Facility and LLNL, its former closest lab partner, where the company successfully drew expert team members from early on. It's not entirely clear but it may potentially make it harder for Focused, which is retaining several offices in the Austin and San Francisco area, to participate in the U.S. DOE's national Fusion Science and Technology Roadmap program and related federal funding opportunities, since it is no longer a U.S. company with a German subsidiary.
Instead, Focused Energy has returned to Germany to be the poster child for the country's ambition to take a "leading global role in nuclear fusion." Dr. Markus Krebber, CEO of RWE AG applauds Focused Energy and the collaboration between the German federal and state government to advance the development of commercial fusion in Germany. This is not surprising, as Germany remains largely opposed to fission, so focusing on fusion makes sense. Yet RWE is one of the largest coal-fired plant and lignite mine operators in the country and their involvement and central role in providing future funding for Focused Energy poses certain risks as well. What seems very clear is that, given these shifts, Focused Energy will have a tougher time trying to raise capital from U.S. venture funds in the future and will be reliant on German funding going forward.
While we understand the importance of building up public interest in one's venture, we disapprove of some of what this announcement contains. In an apparent effort to boost its headline-making news potential, the company claims that this funding is the "largest fully secured Series A financing in the global fusion industry to date." This claim is based not on facts but entirely upon private party negotiations that re-labeled and compressed together several earlier fundraising rounds done in the U.S. between 2021 and 2023 (which was called a Series A back then) converting that funding to series "Seed" status. While it may improve the caliber of today's news grabbing headline, it muddles the financing story. It also encourages similar relabeling of financing histories by other ventures that will inevitably seek to add similar gloss their own images. We invested in Focused in 2022 and have reported on our participation in their Series A for years: now we must explain that we participated in the first but not this second Series A.
Read Focused Energy's May 27, 2026 Press Announcement here: Focused Energy Sets a New Benchmark: $240 Million for the Largest Series A Financing in the Global Fusion Industry.
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[NOTE: Nucleation Capital has been investing into advanced nuclear for five years and we believe there are exceptional investment opportunities. Sadly, the investment opportunities are almost entirely distinct from the media powered "claim landscape" that's been generated and concocts ways to hype achievements and/or valuations. This is a growing concern for us across the nuclear energy landscape in general but in fusion particularly. Fusion energy remains a fairly distant goal and not a single electron generated by fusion has ever been put on the grid. Claims that the Berkeley-based National Ignition Facility (NIF) achieved "net energy" as we would ordinarily think of it, are entirely inaccurate. Net energy on a system/plant basis was not achieved and the NIF scientists themselves did not claim that. Scientists accurately claimed "net energy" only from the amount of laser power that hit the target fohrum with the level of neutron flux achieved in plasma, as showing a step up in power. But that output was only fractions of a percent of the total system power that it took to get plasma in the first place.]
Published by Nucleation Capital in Advanced Nuclear, Department of Energy, Electrification, Energy transition, Fusion, Future of Energy, International Collaboration, NEWS, Nuclear innovation, Nuclear R&D, Portfolio Venture, Private companies, Transatlantic News
Focused Energy has partnered with the University of Rochester Laboratory for Laser Energetics in a $6.9M collaboration to address laser-plasma instabilities and improve performance of inertial fusion systems through combined experimental and modeling work...
Published by Nucleation Capital in Advanced Nuclear, Department of Energy, Electrification, Energy transition, Fusion, Future of Energy, International Collaboration, NEWS, Nuclear innovation, Nuclear R&D, Portfolio Venture, Private companies, Transatlantic News
On Dec. 5, a team at Lawrence Livermore National Lab’s (LLNL) National Ignition Facility (NIF) conducted the first controlled fusion experiment in history to reach fusion "ignition," which is believed to be a breakthrough milestone, where the fusion reaction begins to produce more energy from fusion than the energy applied to drive it.
Scientists studying fusion energy at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California determined via calculations that they had crossed a long-awaited threshold in reproducing the power of the sun in a laboratory. It took a few days for them to do their analysis of the energy product but by Sunday, Dec. 11th, word had begun to leak out. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) , having provided the primary funding for this work, took the lead in taking credit for the achievement and scheduled a press announcement for Tuesday, Dec. 13th. Meanwhile, various results were reported in the press, some claiming 120% gain, some going as high as 150% gain. While the exact number is not that critical, what is important is that these scientists and experts believe that there was a notable achievement in the operation of the plasma ignition that took place, even though it lasted for all of a fraction of a second.
“This is a landmark achievement for the researchers and staff at the National Ignition Facility who have dedicated their careers to seeing fusion ignition become a reality, and this milestone will undoubtedly spark even more discovery,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to supporting our world-class scientists — like the team at NIF — whose work will help us solve humanity’s most complex and pressing problems, like providing clean power to combat climate change and maintaining a nuclear deterrent without nuclear testing.”
LLNL’s experiment surpassed the fusion threshold by delivering 2.05 megajoules (MJ) of laser energy to the target, resulting in 3.15 MJ of fusion energy output, demonstrating for the first time a most fundamental science basis for inertial fusion energy (IFE). Many advanced science and technology developments are still needed to achieve simple, affordable IFE to power homes and businesses, and DOE is currently restarting a broad-based, coordinated IFE program in the United States. Combined with private-sector investment, there is a lot of momentum to drive rapid progress toward fusion commercialization.
Led by physicist John Nuckolls, who later served as LLNL director from 1988 to 1994, this revolutionary idea became inertial confinement fusion, kicking off more than 60 years of research and development in lasers, optics, diagnostics, target fabrication, computer modeling and simulation and experimental design.
To pursue this concept, LLNL built a series of increasingly powerful laser systems, leading to the creation of NIF, the world’s largest and most energetic laser system. NIF — located at LLNL in Livermore, California — is the size of a sports stadium and uses powerful laser beams to create temperatures and pressures like those in the cores of stars and giant planets, and inside exploding nuclear weapons.
[Note: Nucleation Capital has invested in Focused Energy, a private venture which has chosen to develop fusion by following the same Inertial Fusion Energy approach as that used by LLNL. Focused was founded by scientists who had worked at LLNL and who have spent their careers studying both fusion and lasers. Focused Energy has based their ability to deliver fusion upon their expertise in developing the next generation of high-powered laser and the next generation of fuel target, taking what LLNL has done forward with proprietary technology.]
Read more at Lawrence Livermore National Lab: National Ignition Facility achieves fusion ignition, published December 13, 2022; The New York Times, Scientists Achieve Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough With Blast of 192 Lasers, by Kenneth Chang, December 13, 2022; and the Financial Times, Fusion energy breakthrough by US scientists boosts clean power hopes, by Tom Wilson, December 13, 2022. Also see the statement from TAE, a fusion competitor, TAE Technologies’ statement on US nuclear fusion advancement.
Published by Nucleation Capital in Advanced Nuclear, Brilliant thinkers, Energy abundance, Future of Energy, History Timeline, History-making, Investor activity, LINKS, Nuclear competitiveness, Nuclear innovation, Nuclear R&D, Politicians supporting nuclear, Private companies, Solving climate, US technological leadership, Zero emission energy
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