Tiger Global-backed nuclear fusion group secures $1.8bn in funding

Commonwealth Fusion Systems has secured nearly $2bn in funding from investors that include Tiger Global Management and Bill Gates, as the US nuclear energy group develops the promising but fiendishly difficult technology.

Tiger led the $1.8bn Series B funding that was backed by about 30 investors who are committed to making fusion energy commercially viable. The funding supports the ambitions of CFS, which claims it has the fastest, lowest cost path to commercial fusion energy.

“The world is ready to make big investments in commercial fusion as a key part of the global energy transition,” said CFS chief executive Bob Mumgaard.

Unlike nuclear fission when atoms are split, fusion does not produce significant radioactive waste and could never result in a nuclear accident, such as Chernobyl. The most efficient chemical inputs for fusion — deuterium and tritium — are also widely available.

It offers huge potential for zero emissions energy but the technology has always seemed beyond reach.

Google, a major university endowment and pension plan as well as current investors such as Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a sustainable energy investment fund founded by Gates, and Soros Fund Management were among the investors in this CFS funding round.

CFS’s funding, which will be added to the more than $2bn the energy group has raised since it was founded in 2018, will go towards building, commissioning and operating the world’s first commercial net energy fusion machine.

The group, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has gained the financial muscle to begin work on the first commercial fusion power plant, which will include developing technologies and assembling the partners and customers for the future of fusion power. CFS is collaborating with Massachusetts Institute of Technology.