Key facts
- Cambridge Heavy Industries is developing a compact, tabletop fusion device.
- The device uses two main lasers to compress a fuel target, with one laser split into multiple beam lines.
- The company plans to use its smaller-scale devices to produce tritium, a rare isotope of hydrogen.
- Tritium sells for around $30,000 per gram and is crucial for fusion power plants.
- Cambridge Heavy Industries aims to develop a power plant concept in about a decade.
Cambridge Heavy Industries, a startup operating in stealth near MIT, has developed a compact, tabletop fusion device. The company's co-founder and CEO, Yun Kai, revealed the technology in an exclusive look for TechCrunch.
Kai described the device as a "small modular reactor" that is "tiny" and "benchtop," enabling rapid experimentation and iteration. The company utilizes AI-driven simulations to optimize the design based on data from daily experiments. This approach has attracted significant investor interest, leading to a recent $6.2 million seed funding round led by Azolla Ventures, with participation from Overlay, Neta Foundation, P3A, MassCEC, and the Rothrock family.
The fusion reactor employs lasers to compress a fuel target, similar to other inertial confinement designs, but minimizes the number of lasers required. It uses two main lasers, with one split into multiple beam lines that deliver light in concentric rings. These rings are timed to hit the fuel target successively, initiating a compression wave that is further amplified by subsequent rings. A final laser pulse at the target's center generates heat and a magnetic field, leading to fusion under high pressure and heat.
The concept originated from the lab of Keith Nelson, a chemist at MIT, where researchers were studying materials under extreme conditions and found they were approaching fusion-ready parameters. Cambridge Heavy Industries plans to scale up the design over the next decade to develop a power plant, which Kai estimates will be about the size of two basketball courts.
Before achieving a power plant, the company intends to use its smaller devices to produce tritium, a rare and expensive hydrogen isotope essential for most fusion power plants. With only about 40 kilograms existing globally, tritium is a significant bottleneck for the fusion industry. Cambridge Heavy Industries' ability to produce tritium could provide a revenue stream for years as it works towards its larger-scale power plant goals.