Why We Invested In Focused Energy
Unlimited clean energy to unlock the brightest future we can imagine
We are excited to announce that Prime Movers Lab has led a $15 million seed financing round in Focused Energy, a company focused on generating unlimited clean energy through laser-driven fusion. We led this round with participation from Major League Baseball legend and entrepreneur Alex Rodriguez, serial entrepreneur Marc Lore, and renowned investor Tony Florence.
The fusion (merging) of two atoms together powers our sun and the stars across the universe. Engineers and scientists have been working on making enough fusion happen on Earth to run a power plant for decades, using super strong magnets, lasers, pistons, and electric fields to create the conditions necessary. As founding investors, we are thrilled to partner with Focused Energy’s team to accelerate the development of their unique strategy for cost-effective fusion, made possible through breakthroughs in high-power laser engineering, physics, and fusion fuel design developed by the founders.
Cost-effective fusion power would be a gamechanger for meeting the world’s future energy demands. It can be built anywhere (no sun, wind, or pipes needed), and the supply of fuel is essentially unlimited. Like today’s nuclear fission power plants, fusion would create a carbon-free source of reliable, baseload power to complement intermittent energy sources like wind and solar. There are no nuclear accident or weapons proliferation concerns with fusion, which uses flavors of hydrogen as fuel rather than uranium. It’s the holy grail of energy!
Prime Movers Lab has gotten to know Focused Energy’s team and technology over an extended period of time. The founding team includes fusion and laser experts Dr. Markus Roth and Dr. Todd Ditmire. Markus is a professor at TU Darmstadt, internationally recognized for his work in plasma physics and laser-matter interactions. Todd is a world leader in high-power laser engineering and a professor at the University of Texas, Austin. He previously founded National Energetics and was responsible for building the world’s most powerful laser for the ELI (Extreme Light Infrastructure) Project.
These two have worked together for decades on a unique way to use high-power laser beams to drive a fusion reaction — a branch of fusion known as inertial fusion energy (IFE). Notably, a huge advance in IFE was made last month, when the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Lab announced a new record in energy created through a laser-driven fusion reaction. If validated, their experiment provides strong evidence that inertial fusion energy is within reach. Focused Energy’s version of IFE is an improvement on existing approaches by using two sets of lasers: one to compress the fusion fuel, and a second short laser pulse to ignite the fusion reaction (like the spark plug in a gasoline engine). This super-efficient way of getting to fusion is called proton fast ignition.
CEO Thomas Forner and COO Dr. Anika Stein bring leadership and execution skills to complement the strong technical team. Thomas has founded and managed global high-tech companies for over 20 years. Anika is an experienced engineering leader and project manager with key relationships with potential early customers. As the founding investor, Prime Movers Lab is proud to support this powerful team on their mission to achieve low-cost laser-driven fusion energy.
In addition to the incredible founding team and promising technology, Focused Energy’s path to laser-driven fusion creates an opportunity to develop Laser-Driven Radiation Sources (LDRS) in the near term. These LDRS can solve critical inspection challenges in the national security, maritime, and infrastructure sectors. Unlike X-rays, which only see heavy atoms (like calcium in bones), the neutrons that Focused Energy’s LDRS produce can potentially see cracks caused by hydrogen in steel, carbon atoms in different types of plastic, and nitrogen explosives, all without opening or damaging the object.
Early LDRS commercialization will help scale laser manufacturing to bring down costs, plus help build out Focused Energy’s analytics, engineering, materials reliability, and production capabilities. These products will also generate early revenue (in several multibillion-dollar markets), a huge differentiator in this space. (An exception is our partners at Commonwealth Fusion, whose high-temperature superconducting magnet technology also offers early revenue opportunities and downside protection.)
Welcome to the Prime Movers Lab family, Focused Energy. Clearly, there is much to be energized about — stay tuned for powerful things to come!
Prime Movers Lab invests in breakthrough scientific startups founded by Prime Movers, the inventors who transform billions of lives. We invest in seed-stage companies reinventing energy, transportation, infrastructure, manufacturing, human augmentation and agriculture.
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