Fusion power usually conjures images of massive industrial facilities laced with large lasers or magnets, but a startup in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been quietly building a device that can fit on a tabletop.
The optics of the device were on display behind Yun Kai, co-founder and CEO of Cambridge Heavy Industries, while he chatted with me on a video call. The company has been operating in stealth out of a small lab near MIT, and Kai gave TechCrunch an exclusive look at the technology it has been developing.
“We purposely built a small modular reactor. It’s tiny, it’s benchtop,” he told me. “Because it’s small, it makes everything easier.”
The small size has allowed Cambridge Heavy to experiment and iterate quickly. “The small module nature can enable 50 to 80 experiments, 50 to 80 shots per day,” he said. Data from those experiments will feed simulations that use AI to optimize the design.
That nimble approach has attracted investor attention. The startup recently raised a $6.2 million seed round led by Azolla Ventures with participation from Overlay, Neta Foundation, P3A, MassCEC, and the Rothrock family.
Cambridge Heavy’s fusion reactor uses lasers to compress a fuel target, similar to the groundbreaking experiment that proved controlled fusion reactions could produce more power than they consume. But unlike other inertial confinement designs, Cambridge Heavy’s minimizes the number of lasers required to spark fusion.
The system uses two main lasers to drive ignition. One laser is split into multiple beam lines that deliver light in concentric rings.
Source link
