New Jersey-based fusion startup Thea Energy announced that it has raised $100 million in Series B funding round, with proceeds from the financing aimed at advancing the company’s technology enabling the development of commercial fusion energy plants.
Fusion, the process of combining two atoms to form a single atom to release energy, has been long referred to as the “Holy Grail” of clean and abundant energy production, given its potential to produce power from hydrogen – the most common element in the universe – without producing carbon emissions associated with fossil-fuel based power, and without the highly radioactive output of nuclear fission processes. Large scale fusion energy generation has been elusive, however, given the need to create extremely high temperatures and pressure.
Spun out of Princeton University and Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory in 2022, Thea Energy was launched to commercialize scalable and economical fusion energy systems based on its planar coil stellarator architecture. Stellarators are doughnut-shaped devices that magnetically levitate hot ionized plasma and heats it to extremely high temperatures to achieve fusion power. Thea Energy’s solution uses flat, AI-enabled superconducting magnets, simplifying the magnet technology,, enabling simpler manufacturing and faster construction, relative to prior generations of the stellarator.
According to Thea Energy, the new capital will be used to expand its magnet manufacturing infrastructure, including the addition of a second facility in Northern New Jersey, and will also fast-track the construction of its integrated fusion system, and ultimately support its progress toward commercial deployment.
Brian Berzin, Co-Founder and CEO of Thea Energy, said:
“We built Thea Energy to take fusion out of the lab and onto the grid. Our architecture is simpler to manufacture, faster to construct, and more tolerant of real-world conditions compared to all other approaches. Commercial fusion requires adaptable, high-uptime power plants; this Series B accelerates that reality.”
The funding round was led by US Innovative Technology Fund (USIT), with participation from investors including General Innovation Capital Partners (GICP), Linse Capital, Calm Ventures, Climate Capital, Divergent Capital, Emerald Technology Ventures, Gaingels, Idemitsu Kosan, Overlay Capital, Timescale Ventures, and Whatif Ventures.
Gaetano Crupi, Managing Director at USIT, said:
“The stellarator is an inherently stable fusion architecture that offers the most efficient path to long-term power generation, but prior 3D stellarator magnets historically made the system impractical to build. Thea Energy’s breakthroughs shift complexity from precision mechanical fabrication to software-defined controls. As energy security and rapidly increasing power demands take center stage amidst re-industrialization and the AI boom, the U.S. cannot cede leadership in fusion.”
