Twilio co-founder's fusion power startup raises $450M from Bessemer and Alphabet's GV | TechCrunch

"Inertia Enterprises has raised $450 million to build one of the world's most powerful lasers, which it hopes will serve as the foundation of a grid-scale power plant the fusion startup intends to start construction on in 2030. Inertia Enterprises is building on technology developed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility. The NIF is the site of the world's only controlled fusion reactions that have reached scientific breakeven, in which the reaction releases more energy than it took to start."

"The Series A was led by Bessemer Venture Partners with participation from GV, Modern Capital, Threshold Ventures, and others. Inertia's co-founders include Jeff Lawson, who co-founded Twilio and served as its CEO, Annie Kircher, who led the successful experiments at NIF, and Mike Dunne, a Stanford professor who helped Lawrence Livermore develop a power plant design based on NIF. Kircher has remained in her position at Lawrence Livermore."

"For Inertia, that means building a laser capable of delivering 10 kilojoules ten times per second. The startup's reactor relies on a form of fusion known as inertial confinement. In Inertia's flavor of inertial confinement, lasers bombard a fuel target, compressing the fuel until atoms inside fuse and release energy. The technique is based on NIF's designs, in which laser light is converted into X-rays inside the target."

Inertia Enterprises raised $450 million to develop one of the world's most powerful lasers as the core of a planned grid-scale fusion power plant with construction targeted for 2030. The company builds on Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility technology, which has produced the only controlled fusion experiments to reach scientific breakeven. The startup's approach uses inertial confinement: high-power lasers compress fuel targets until atoms fuse and release energy via X-rays generated inside the target. Inertia aims to mass-produce inexpensive 4.5 mm targets and deploy roughly 1,000 lasers per plant, but substantial technical progress remains before grid electricity delivery is possible.

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