Latest news with #TAETechnologies
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
TAE Technologies raises $150m in funding for fusion energy development
Fusion energy firm TAE Technologies has raised more than $150m in its latest funding round, supporting efforts to deliver the world's first commercial fusion power. The recent capital injection surpasses the initial target set for this round of financing. Among the investors participating in the round were Chevron, Google and New Enterprise Associates (NEA), along with other new and existing stakeholders. The option remains open for TAE to secure additional funds as part of this round. AE's total equity capital raised since inception now exceeds $1.3bn, further endorsing the company's unique approach to achieving commercial fusion. In early 2025, TAE announced a significant breakthrough with its "Norm" technology, which achieved stable plasma at temperatures exceeding 70 million degrees Celsius in a simplified fusion device. This advancement is a step forward in enhancing the performance and reactor-readiness of TAE's fusion tech. TAE's collaboration with Google, which began in 2014, has been instrumental in reaching this milestone. Together, they have utilised advanced machine learning to expedite fusion science, resulting in improved plasma lifetime and performance. TAE Technologies CEO Michl Binderbauer stated: 'Fusion has the potential to transform the energy landscape, providing near-limitless clean power at a time when the world's energy needs are growing exponentially due to the growth of AI and data centres. 'TAE's technology uses the soundest physics to deliver superior performance in a compact machine, with attractive economics and best-in-class maintainability. We are leading the charge to develop revolutionary fusion technology for full-scale commercial deployment.' Google engineers have been integrated into TAE's teams, co-developing sophisticated plasma reconstruction algorithms. Google's ongoing support reflects a comprehensive technical and commercial evaluation of TAE's fusion approach, as detailed by Ross Koningstein, founder of Google's nuclear energy research and development group, on the Google blog. The fusion systems developed by TAE promise on-demand, carbon-free, utility-scale power without the risks associated with traditional nuclear power, such as meltdowns or long-lived radioactive waste. This safety profile allows TAE fusion power plants to be located in diverse settings, from densely populated areas to remote regions or near large data centres. 'We're delighted to continue our relationship with Google, which has not only provided funding to TAE but collaborated closely in research and development over many years. With this latest fundraise, we look forward to accelerating our efforts to deliver commercial fusion power,' Binderbauer added. TAE's technological prowess is evidenced by its portfolio of more than 1,500 patents worldwide and the successful construction of five prototype generations. The last four prototypes are comparable in size to traditional natural gas combustion turbines, with two additional prototypes currently in development. "TAE Technologies raises $150m in funding for fusion energy development" was originally created and published by Power Technology, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Bloomberg
3 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Bloomberg Intelligence: US Manufacturing Activity Contracted in May for a Third Month
Watch Alix and Paul LIVE every day on YouTube: Bloomberg Intelligence hosted by Paul Sweeney and Alix Steel Today's Podcast Features are: Susan Spence, Chair, ISM Manufacturing PMI at Institute for Supply Management, discusses ISM Manufacturing data. US factory activity contracted in May for a third consecutive month and a gauge of imports fell to a 16-year low as firms pulled back in the face of higher tariffs. Sam Fazeli, Bloomberg Intelligence, Director of Research for Global Industries and Senior Pharmaceuticals, discusses the latest Biotech news. Sanofi agrees to buy Blueprint Medicines Corp. for at least $9.1 billion to expand in rare immunological diseases. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. will pay BioNTech SE as much as $11.1 billion to license a next-generation cancer drug. – Moderna won FDA approval for its second-generation Covid vaccine for all adults over 65 and anyone over 12 who has at least one risk factor for severe disease. Shana Sissel, President and CEO at Banríon Capital Management, joins to discuss her outlook on the markets. Wall Street investors are parsing economic data, tariff, and geopolitical developments, causing stocks to waver and the dollar to head towards its lowest since 2023. Michl Binderbauer, CEO of TAE Technologies, discusses company's latest funding round. TAE Technologies ('TAE'), the leading fusion energy company developing the cleanest and safest approach to commercial fusion power, today announced that it has raised more than $150 million in its latest funding round, exceeding the company's initial target for the round.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
TAE Technologies Raises $150 Million in Latest Funding Round
Latest fundraise supports TAE's efforts to deliver world's first commercial fusion power; Google continues more than 10-year research and funding partnership with TAE FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif., June 2, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- TAE Technologies ("TAE"), the leading fusion energy company developing the cleanest and safest approach to commercial fusion power, today announced that it has raised more than $150 million in its latest funding round, exceeding the company's initial target for the round. Chevron, Google and NEA participated in the round, among other new and existing investors. TAE has the option to raise additional capital as part of this funding round. With more than $1.3 billion in equity capital raised since inception, this latest fundraise further validates TAE's distinctive approach to commercial fusion. Michl Binderbauer, CEO of TAE Technologies, said: "Fusion has the potential to transform the energy landscape, providing near-limitless clean power at a time when the world's energy needs are growing exponentially due to the growth of AI and data centers. TAE's technology uses the soundest physics to deliver superior performance in a compact machine, with attractive economics and best-in-class maintainability. We are leading the charge to develop revolutionary fusion technology for full-scale commercial deployment." Earlier this year, TAE announced a major milestone that fundamentally advances the performance, practicality and reactor-readiness of its proprietary fusion technology. The company's "Norm" breakthrough – achieving stable plasma at over 70 million °C in a simplified fusion device – was made possible in part through TAE's more than decade-long collaboration with Google. Since 2014, TAE and Google Research have worked together to accelerate fusion science using cutting-edge machine learning. Google engineers worked onsite at TAE facilities to co-develop advanced plasma reconstruction algorithms, leading to significantly improved plasma lifetime and performance. Google's deep integration into TAE's engineering teams helped the company unlock a practical path to economic fusion and was instrumental in enabling the Norm breakthrough that now paves the way for TAE's next milestone: validating net energy capability in its Copernicus reactor. Google's renewed commitment to TAE follows a thorough technical and commercial evaluation of TAE's distinctive fusion approach. Read more from Ross Koningstein, Founder, Google's Nuclear Energy R&D group, on the Google Blog. Binderbauer continued: "We're delighted to continue our relationship with Google, who have not only provided funding to TAE but collaborated closely in research and development over many years. With this latest fundraise, we look forward to accelerating our efforts to deliver commercial fusion power." TAE's fusion systems can provide on-demand, carbon-free, utility-scale power that is also inherently safe. With no risk of meltdown or long-lived radioactive waste, a TAE fusion power plant can be safely placed wherever power is needed. This creates unparalleled flexibility for siting, whether near highly populated areas, remote locations or large-scale data centers. TAE has been granted more than 1,500 patents worldwide and has successfully constructed five generations of prototypes. Notably, the last four prototypes are comparable in size to traditional natural gas combustion turbines, with two more currently under development. Additional Information About TAE Technologies TAE was founded in 1998 to develop commercial fusion power with the cleanest environmental profile. The company has established itself as a leader in an industry that has the potential to transform the energy economy. Notable company and scientific milestones include: Raised and deployed $1.2 billion through 11 prior fundraises. Investors include Google, Chevron, Sumitomo Corporation of Americas, NEA, Wellcome Trust, and the visionary family offices of Addison Fischer, the Samberg Family, Charles Schwab, and others. Built five increasingly powerful and productive demonstration units to National Laboratory scale. Partnered closely with Google for more than a decade. Among their various achievements together, the companies have co-developed the Optometrist Algorithm, a plasma optimization tool that has helped accelerate TAE's scientific progress. Announced in April 2025 the invention of a streamlined approach to form and optimize plasma that increases efficiency, significantly reduces complexity and cost, and accelerates the company's path to net energy and commercial fusion power. Advanced construction on its sixth demonstration unit, Copernicus, which is on track to achieve a net energy milestone before the end of the decade. Delivered a roadmap for its first prototype power plant, Da Vinci, which will be operational in the early 2030s and will deliver TAE's first commercial fusion power. Fusion is nature's preferred source of energy. It is the same process that powers the sun and stars, and it is what makes life viable on Earth. When lighter elements fuse under immense heat and pressure, they form new elements and release a tremendous amount of energy. This process is safer than conventional nuclear power because fusion can be stopped at any time - eliminating the risk of a power plant meltdown. In TAE's future fusion power plant, hydrogen and boron atoms will fuse into three helium atoms inside of a stable, superhot plasma to produce an even more energetic light than the sun – all with no long-lived radioactive waste. When the heat generated by that light warms the walls of the fusion machine, a network of pipes will spring into action to cool the interior walls by collecting that heat into a fluid and ushering it to a steam generator. The steam spins a turbine that then drives an electric generator, similar to what happens in operating power plants today. TAE's unique fusion core supplies a superior and environmentally benign heat source for future power plants. The essential requirement for capturing net energy across all approaches to fusion is high-quality plasma confinement. TAE has developed a proprietary approach called an advanced beam-driven Field-Reversed Configuration (FRC), which solves the challenge of confinement both from a cost and performance perspective. TAE's approach is the first known design in the world to form an FRC plasma using only neutral particle beams. TAE's FRC-based fusion approach is built to integrate with today's grid infrastructure and engineered for cost-effective construction and operation. Unlike other fusion approaches, it has the advantage of being modular, allowing quick and scalable deployment with a much smaller footprint than traditional fusion systems but at similar power outputs. TAE's systems are designed for sustained performance, efficient maintenance and reliable stability, meaning they are adaptable for a wide range of geographies and energy demands. Contact: Abbey Goodman, 949-830-2117, press@ About TAE Technologies TAE Technologies was founded in 1998 to develop commercial fusion power with the cleanest environmental profile. The company's pioneering work represents the fastest, most practical and economically competitive solution to bring abundant clean energy to the grid. With over 1,500 granted patents worldwide, more than $1.3 billion in private capital, five generations of National Laboratory-scale devices built along with two more in development, TAE is now on the cusp of delivering this transformational energy source capable of sustaining the planet for thousands of years. The company's revolutionary technologies have produced a robust portfolio of commercial innovations in adjacent markets such as power management, energy storage, electric mobility, fast charging, life sciences and more. TAE is based in California, and maintains international offices in the UK, EU and Switzerland. Multidisciplinary and mission-driven by nature, TAE is leveraging proprietary science and engineering to create a bright future. View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE TAE Technologies Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Epoch Times
27-05-2025
- Science
- Epoch Times
Will Nuclear Fusion Soon Be the ‘Norm?'
Commentary The dream of humanity to imitate the forces that created their habitat has been alive for at least as far back as the time when humans with a single language decided to build a city with a tower that reached the heavens. For such a people, 'nothing they plan will be impossible to them,' it is recorded. For at least the same time frame, humanity has sought comfort through technology. While primitive heat producers like coal and wood are still used today, the discovery that petroleum, natural gas, and even moving water could generate a newly discovered phenomenon known as 'electricity' transformed the industrial revolution into the modern era. Not until the 1930s did German scientists build on Enrico Fermi's discovery that neutrons could split atoms to recognize that splitting atoms would release significant energy—energy that could be used for both bombs and electricity generation. By the 1950s, scientists began building nuclear fission-based power plants that today provide about a tenth of the world's electricity. Scientists and engineers also began to envision the potential of nuclear fusion—the reaction of light atomic nuclei powers the sun and the stars. Since that time, they have worked feverishly, but with little success, to replicate this energy-rich reaction using deuterium and tritium. One group of scientists and engineers decided to try an alternative approach. Related Stories 5/22/2025 5/21/2025 Founded in 1998, California-based TAE Technologies has been developing a reactor that runs on proton-boron aneutronic fusion—that is, a fusion reaction that fuses a hydrogen nucleus with non-radioactive boron-11 instead of fusing hydrogen isotopes of deuterium and tritium. Their goal is to develop commercial fusion power with the cleanest-possible environmental profile. All efforts at fusion require chambers that can withstand temperatures of millions of degrees Celsius and immense pressure that are needed to fuse two isotopes together. To accomplish this requires huge amounts of energy—and until recently, more energy than the fusion produced. Most fusion researchers, including those building the ITER project being built in France, rely on a donut-shaped tokamak reactor chamber, in which a stream of plasma must be held away from its walls by electromagnets for any energy to be produced. The tokamak design uses a toroidal magnetic field to contain the hydrogen plasma and keep it hot enough to ignite fusion. Sadly, as with ITER, project costs have soared and timeframes have fallen by the wayside despite occasional breakthroughs. Over decades, tokamak designs became gigantic, with huge superconducting magnetic coils to generate containment fields; they also had huge, complex electromagnetic heating systems. Spurred by the failures of wind and solar to fully satisfy the desire for 'clean energy,' governments and private investors began investing heavily into fission and fusion projects. Oak Ridge, Tennessee, has tapped into a $60 million state fund intended to bolster both fission and fusion energy in atomic energy's American birthplace. New The old method used for a stellarator reactor relied on perturbation theory. The new method, which relies on symmetry theory, is a game changer. It can also be used to identify holes in the tokamak magnetic field through which runaway electrons push through their surrounding walls and greatly reduce energy output. The TAE Technology reactor is entirely different than any of the tokamak or stellarator fusion chambers. In 2017, the company introduced its fifth-generation reactor, named Norman, which was designed to keep plasma stable at 30 million C. Five years later the machine had proven capable of sustaining stable plasma at more than 75 million C. That success enabled TAE to secure sufficient funding for its sixth-generation Copernicus reactor and to envision the birth of its commercial-ready Da Vinci reactor. But in between, TAE developed Norm. Norm uses a different type of fusion reaction and a new reactor design that exclusively produces plasma using neutral beam injections. The TAE design dumps the toroidal field in favor of a linear magnetic field that is based on the 'field-reversed configuration' (FRC) principle, a simpler, more efficient way to build a commercial reactor. Instead of massive magnetic coils, FRC makes the plasma produce its own magnetic containment field. The process involves accelerating high-energy hydrogen ions and giving them a neutral charge, then injecting them as a beam into the plasma. That causes the beams to be re-ionized as the collision energy heats the plasma to set up internal toroidal currents. Norm's neutral beam injection system has cut the size, complexity, and cost, compared to that of Norman, by up to 50 percent. But not only is an FRC reactor smaller and less expensive to manufacture and operate, says TAE, it can also produce up to 100 times more fusion power output than a tokamak—based on the same magnetic field strength and plasma volume. The FRC reactor also can run on proton-boron aneutronic fusion, which, instead of producing a neutron it produces three alpha particles plus a lot of energy. The fewer neutrons also do less damage to the reactor; the energy being released as charged particles is easier to harness. Less shielding is required, and, perhaps best of all, boron-11 is relatively abundant and not radioactive. So, while 'Norm' may not be the final step in developing commercial fusion energy, TAE's hope is that fusion energy will the 'norm' as early as the mid-1930s. FRC technology has materially de-risked Copernicus, according to TAE CEO Michi Binderbauer. If Norm is as advertised, it will accelerate the pathway to commercial hydrogen-boron fusion—a safe, clean, and virtually limitless energy source. But is humanity ready for free energy to be the 'norm?' From Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists achieve breakthrough solution to decades-long issue with virtually limitless energy device: 'Charting a path'
While nuclear fusion technology would prove a promising energy source with zero carbon pollution and minimal radioactive waste if successfully commercialized, scientists are still struggling to navigate its financial and technical roadblocks. On that front, researchers at California's TAE Technologies have made significant strides in reducing the cost and complexity of fusion technology without compromising on its extraordinary efficiency. Ordinarily, fusion requires engineers to generate plasma at extremely high temperatures and to confine the energy released, often with Field-Reversed Configuration technology, TAE explained in a release. The FRC tech produces its own internal magnetic field to yield up to 100 times more energy than a typical tokamak reactor and makes hydrogen-boron fuel — "the cleanest, safest, and most sustainable option for the planet," noted the release — more viable. Unfortunately, plasma formation using the FRC has so far proven both costly and unstable. TAE Technologies' solution, published in the journal Nature Communications, involves injecting neutral particle beams into the company's new advanced particle accelerator "Norm" to heat and stabilize an FRC plasma. The engineers' findings have the potential to "[reduce] the machine's size, complexity and cost by up to 50% and [optimize] for economic competitiveness and commercial viability," the release continued. As demands for global energy production continue to rise under our growing populations and industrial developments, moving away from dirty energy becomes increasingly important to avert environmental catastrophe. Burning fuels like coal and oil releases carbon pollution into our atmosphere — 36.8 billion tonnes in 2023, and still rising, according to NASA's Earth Observatory — and traps heat on our planet. The ripple effects of rising temperatures include more intense extreme weather events and threats to our food and crop supply. Fusion technology supplies massive amounts of power without any reliance on fuel-burning, and without the radioactive waste problem that afflicts today's fission-based technology. Should the U.S. invest more in battery innovations? Absolutely Depends on the project We're investing enough We should invest less Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. Commercializing fusion technology may not only limit the climate impact of energy generation, but it could also slash utility costs for the average individual by enabling power companies to more easily and efficiently keep up with demand. TAE's "Norm" development, for instance, may "[chart] a path for streamlined devices that directly addresses the commercially critical metrics of cost, efficiency, and reliability," theorized Michl Binderbauer, CEO of TAE Technologies. "This milestone significantly accelerates TAE's path to commercial hydrogen-boron fusion that will deliver a safe, clean, and virtually limitless energy source for generations to come," Binderbauer added. "Norm" is set to precede TAE's next reactor prototype, "Copernicus," which TAE engineers anticipate will demonstrate fusion as a viable energy source before 2030. As TAE continues to research and refine its technology, TAE's first full-fledged nuclear fusion power plant, known as "Da Vinci," will hopefully come online in the early 2030s. Join our free newsletter for weekly updates on the latest innovations improving our lives and shaping our future, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
