Magnetics Business & Technology - July/August 2022 - 14

FEATURE ARTICLE
CFS Blazes Path to Fusion Power with Powerful Magnet and $1.8 Billion Funding
Large-bore, full-scale high-temperature superconducting magnet designed and built by Commonwealth Fusion Systems and MIT's Plasma Science
and Fusion Center, capable of generating a 20-tesla magnetic field.
With more than $1.8 billion in blue-ribbon investor funding and
successful demonstrations of the practicality of a record-powerful
magnet, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a spinoff from Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, is trailblazing a path toward
commercializing fusion energy. It plans to reach the long-coveted
destination in the early 2030s. Two big steps were accomplished
recently - one involves money, the other technology using hightemperature
superconducting tape.
In November, it closed on more than $1.8 billion in Series B funding
from an array of high-profile energy investors, providing capital
to construct, commission, and operate SPARC, planned to
become the world's first commercially relevant net energy fusion
machine. In addition, it will enable the company to begin work on
ARC, planned to become the first commercial fusion power plant.
Among the blue-ribbon participants are Bill Gates, Google, Marc
Benioff's TIME Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Soros Fund Management
and several large energy investment funds. CFS has raised
more than $2 billion in funding since it was founded in 2018.
" The world is ready to make big investments in commercial fusion
as a key part of the global energy transition. This diverse group of
investors includes a spectrum of capital from energy and technology
companies to venture capitalists, hedge funds, and university
endowments that believe in fusion as a large-scale solution to decarbonize
the planet, " said CEO Bob Mumgaard.
Only two months earlier, CFS and the Plasma Science and Fusion
Center (PSFC) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
announced the successful test of the world's strongest high temperature
superconducting (HTS) magnet, the key technology for
14 Magnetics Business & Technology * July/August 2022
the device that they expect to unlock the path to clean commercial
fusion energy. Conducted at the MIT center, the test proved that
the magnet built at scale can reach a sustained magnetic field of
more than 20 tesla, making it the strongest magnet in the world
and powerful enough to enable CFS's compact tokamak device,
called SPARC, to achieve net energy from fusion, a historic first.
Director of the PSFC Dennis Whyte (left) and CEO of CFS Bob
Mumgaard in the test hall at MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center.
The collaboration which began over three years ago with the
formation of CFS now moves to the next phase, building SPARC,
expected to be the world's first device to create and confine a
plasma that produces net fusion energy.
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Magnetics Business & Technology - July/August 2022

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