Introducing Pacific Fusion

We started Pacific Fusion in the summer of 2023 with a clear mission: to power the world with abundant, affordable, clean energy.

Today, we are excited to share (1) the convictions that led us to begin this journey, (2) our approach to fusion, and (3) the company we are building.

1. Why we started Pacific Fusion

Affordable energy drives prosperity and improves quality of life. Starting in the early 1800s, the growing abundance of inexpensive energy (largely from fossil fuels) has been the foundation for enormous economic progress — steadily transforming every aspect of human health, work, and life.

Global energy demand continues to soar, as people around the world seek to improve their quality of life. As we expand power production to satisfy this growing need, the world must also shift to cleaner energy, decoupling economic progress from the consequences of climate change. Many power sources — solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, fission, and others — have important roles to play in this transition.

Fusion has enormous potential. Fusion is what powers the stars, where hydrogen is squeezed into helium, releasing millions of times more energy than in chemical reactions. Fusion could be the ideal power source — emitting no CO2, requiring far less materials and land than other power sources, and offering billions of years of nearly free, globally accessible fuel. The challenge is making affordable systems to use that fuel.

Recent advances enable affordable fusion systems. In the last two years, breakthroughs in inertial fusion and pulsed power (described below) have opened a path to affordable fusion power. We launched Pacific Fusion to build on these advances and create the world's most sustainable and affordable on-demand power source.

2. Our approach to fusion

We are pursuing a pulsed magnetic path to inertial fusion — that is, using fast-rising, high-current pulses to magnetically squeeze and heat small containers of deuterium-tritium fuel, driving the fuel to fusion conditions. You can read more about the field in a recent community white paper here. Our approach is exciting for a few reasons: 

• We build on established science. In 2022, breakthroughs in inertial fusion definitively showed the conditions required for ignition and high gain. The National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) used lasers to achieve ignition and the highest laboratory fusion performance (Pτ) ever, and the Z Machine at Sandia National Laboratories used fast-rising current pulses to drive the MagLIF concept to achieve the highest pulsed magnetic fusion Pτ ever, second only to laser-driven concepts. This was the culmination of over a half century of US government support and hard-fought progress by fusion researchers.
   
• We use proven engineering. We are building a fast pulser, similar to Sandia’s well-proven Z Machine. Our pulser is made efficient and compact thanks to decades of advances in pulsed power engineering — especially the recently-demonstrated impedance-matched Marx generator (IMG). In 2022, LLNL first demonstrated this advanced IMG technology, opening an efficient and affordable way to reliably achieve inertial fusion conditions.
   
• We have a clear path to low cost and global scale. Our system is built of small mass-manufacturable units called bricks (two capacitors and a switch), which are assembled into modules that fit into shipping containers. Our fusion chamber is compact and cylindrical, facilitating low-cost maintenance. Our system is built from widely available materials. And, our fuel is vastly cheaper than fossil fuels, even accounting for consumables such as fuel containers.

3. Our company

We’ve focused on building a company that can deliver on our mission. That requires robust funding, clear goals, and an extraordinary team. 

Our funding: More than $900M so far from the best syndicate we could ask for. Our plans are ambitious, and we are proud and humbled to have an amazing set of investors supporting us and our work. We have secured more than $900 million in our Series A to date. Hemant Taneja of General Catalyst led the round. Alongside General Catalyst, a great mix of institutional VCs and individual company builders have participated, including: Andrew Forrest, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Elad Gil, Eric Schmidt, John Doerr, Ken Griffin, Lachy Groom, Leitmotif, Lightspeed, Lowercarbon Capital, Mustafa Suleyman, Patrick Collison, Reid Hoffman, Richard Merkin, and Trousdale Ventures. Hemant Taneja, Eric Schmidt, and Patrick Collison joined our Board of Directors. 

We structured the round in a unique way: The funding is all committed upfront (to mitigate financing risk), and it’s unlocked as we achieve predefined milestones (to ensure accountability). We’re enormously grateful to Hemant, the GC team, and our founding syndicate for their creative partnership in structuring the financing. 

Our immediate goal: Net facility gain. We are using these resources to build a high-gain pulsed magnetic fusion driver to achieve ‘net facility gain’ (more fusion energy output than all stored energy input). In parallel, we have started engineering the components and systems needed for affordable commercial fusion systems. We have a clear path toward achieving these goals, and we’re well on our way to completing our first major milestones. 

Our team: Talented, humble builders, based in Fremont, California. We’ve been thrilled and honored that exceptional people have voted with their feet to join this mission. Our team, now 44 strong, includes many of the best scientists, engineers, and operators from the fusion community and hard tech industry. 

We are united by a shared sense of urgency — to meet rapidly growing global energy demand while addressing climate change — and a shared sense of responsibility — to each other, to our investors, to our country, and to our planet. (You can read more about our values here). 

We cannot power the planet by working alone. We are committed to collaborating with the broader scientific community. We will regularly share and publish our research so others can scrutinize and build on our findings, just as we build on theirs. We are equally committed to partnering with communities, regulators, policymakers, suppliers, industry peers, and customers as we make commercial fusion a reality together. 

If you want to build the future of energy, join us.

- Eric Lander, Will Regan, Keith LeChien, Carrie von Muench, and Leland Ellison