TAE Technologies is a nearly 30-year-old company developing compact plasma reactors aimed at commercial fusion power. Its reactor design produces a hollow-cigar plasma that generates its own magnetic field to work with reactor magnets for containment. The company recently eliminated the need to fire two plasma balls to initiate reactions, instead forming, heating, and stabilizing plasma using particle beams alone, which it says reduces size, cost, and complexity. TAE's current devices can heat plasmas to about 70 million °C, while the company says commercial systems must reach roughly 1 billion °C. Google has collaborated with TAE since 2014 on machine learning to optimize device settings and has participated in multiple investment rounds. Financially, TAE raised $150 million in the latest funding round, has closed twelve rounds to date, and has raised about $1.8 billion overall; CEO Michl Binderbauer is aiming to raise an additional $50 million before this round closes. The company is targeting to put electrons on the grid in the early 2030s. TAE Technologies develops an alternative approach to nuclear fusion intended to produce large amounts of carbon-free energy with limited long-lived radioactive waste. The company was founded in 1998 with the goal of building compact, cost-effective, and safe commercial fusion power sources. TAE says it aims to build commercial-scale fusion reactors and deliver energy to the grid in the early 2030s. Google has partnered with TAE since 2014, providing artificial intelligence and computational support. The company announced a new $250 million investment that brings its total capital raised to $1.2 billion. Management frames the financing as validation of technical progress and support for near-term commercialization goals. TAE Technologies is a 20-year-old private fusion developer that has demonstrated stable plasma exceeding 50 million degrees in its Norman device. The company says that achievement validates its confinement approach and makes commercial-scale reactors feasible by the end of the decade. TAE has not yet produced net energy and still treats energy output from current tests as diagnostic-level signals. It plans a demonstration facility called Copernicus that will start on a deuterium-tritium (D-T) cycle and ultimately transition to hydrogen-boron (pB-11) aneutronic fuel. The firm is also preparing to spin off power-management technology for peak shaving, energy storage and battery management. TAE has leveraged machine learning with Google and exascale compute via the DOE INCITE program in its development work.

Total raised

$680M

Funding rounds

3

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Jun 2025