Startup looks to commercialize inertial fusion energy
Another startup hoping to capitalize on progress the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has made in realizing inertial fusion energy has been launched. On August 27, San Francisco–based Inertia Enterprises, a private fusion power start-up, announced the formation of the company with the goal of commercializing fusion energy.
The company is being cofounded by Andrea “Annie” Kritcher, who was part the team at LLNL’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) that conducted the first controlled fusion experiment to achieve fusion ignition in December 2022, along with Mike Dunne, a professor of photon science at Stanford University and an associate lab director of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and Jeff Lawson, founder and CEO of the tech platform Twilio.
Inertia follows the formation of Orinda, Calif.–based Longview Fusion Energy Systems, which was founded in 2021 by former NIF project manager and director Edward Moses, and Fremont, Calif.–based Pacific Fusion, which was started in 2023 by former LLNL staff Keith LeChien, Nathan Meezan, and Leland Ellison, along with Will Regan and Eric Lander.
The plan: In announcing the formation of the company, Inertia said it is developing a new generation of mass-produced, low-cost lasers and fuel targets that leverage NIF’s success in achieving ignition through laser-induced inertial confinement fusion.
“There’s a lot of excitement around various potential pathways to fusion right now, but only one approach has delivered energy gain. This result is a monumental step for limitless clean energy,” said Kritcher.
The company said it has partnered with LLNL on “a substantial and multifaceted relationship, including research agreements, to advance low-cost, mass-production fusion target design and fabrication.” Nearly 200 patents covering multiple technologies needed to achieve fusion ignition have been licensed by Inertia, and the company has arranged a public-private collaboration and technology transfer that has allowed Kritcher to be a co-founder of Inertia.
According to the company’s website, Inertia intends to spend the next four years refining its laser design, target fabrication techniques, and plant design before beginning construction on a demonstration fusion power plant.
More quotes: “The goal of delivering limitless fusion energy has attracted tens of billions of dollars in government investment and decades of research, culminating in the achievement of ignition just a couple of years ago,” said Lawson, Inertia’s CEO. “Standing on the shoulders of giants, we see a clear path from big science to commercial energy by scaling up the industrial base to the scale needed for laser inertial fusion.”
“We’re at a crucial tipping point,” added Dunne. “2022 proved that controlled fusion ignition is possible, but current lasers, like the one at LLNL, which is the size of three football fields, are not suitable for commercialization. But with modern laser technologies, we can combine the transformative results from Annie and the team with high-powered laser technology from the semiconductor industry to convert decades of research into a reality.”
