Marathon Fusion is developing high-throughput tritium extraction and hydrogen purification systems based on superpermeation to enable fuel supply for commercial fusion reactors. The startup is refining a 40-year-old superpermeation technique that uses a metal membrane and a plasma-stage process to allow hydrogen (including tritium) to pass while blocking impurities and compressing the gas for injection. Marathon’s goal is to increase filtration throughput by, in the company’s words, "a few orders of magnitude" to meet continuous commercial reactor needs versus current experimental equipment. The company has operated stealthily and received early support from the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E program and the Breakthrough Energy Fellows program. Marathon recently raised a $5.9 million seed round led by the 1517 Fund and Anglo American, with participation from Übermorgen Ventures, Shared Future Fund and Malcolm Handley. It also holds letters of intent from Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Helion Energy to potentially supply fuel-processing systems as fusion deployment scales.

Total raised

$6M

Funding rounds

1

Latest round

Seed

Latest activity

Jul 2024