Fusion Energy Start-Up Hephaestus Emerges With US$17.2 Mln

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 22 (Bernama) -- London-based fusion energy start-up Hephaestus has emerged from stealth, having raised US$17.2 million to date, with its latest funding round led by CiRi Ventures. (US$1 = RM4.07)

The company is developing technology aimed at cutting two of fusion power’s biggest costs: the high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets that confine the plasma, and plasma instabilities known as edge-localised modes (ELMs), which add cost and complexity to conventional reactors.

Hephaestus chief executive and founder, Jack Zamattio said fusion could add tens of gigawatts of clean, stable power to the grid each year, but only if it became affordable and scalable.

“That is why we chose negative triangularity (NT), and why we are manufacturing our own novel HTS magnets, to realise fusion’s full industrial potential,” he said in a statement.

Founded in 2019, Hephaestus used an artificial intelligence (AI) plasma solver to identify NT, a reactor design that inverts the D-shaped plasma used in most tokamaks, or doughnut-shaped fusion reactors, as the most promising route to low-cost fusion energy.

Results from facilities worldwide, including DIII-D, JET and SMART, have shown the design can perform strongly without ELMs. Its first device, Anvil 0, which it says is the world’s first tokamak designed for NT from the outset, was completed in 2024.

The company has also used its AI materials discovery platform, MaDi-AI, to develop several new rare-earth-free HTS materials, validated at lab scale by the UK’s National Physical Laboratory. Current fusion magnets rely on a rare-earth material that is slow and costly to make and is concentrated in regions of geopolitical risk, and Hephaestus said its materials are cheaper and easier to scale.

The new funding will support HTS manufacturing at a new 70,000-square-foot facility in New Jersey from 2027 and a reactor by 2030 designed to demonstrate net energy gain, meaning it produces more energy than it consumes.

Hephaestus has opened early discussions with fusion developers seeking HTS supply and is hiring across its New Jersey, London and Rome sites.

-- BERNAMA