Participated · Series A · Jan 2024

Transmutex develops a non-self-sustaining reaction technology that couples a particle accelerator to a subcritical fuel assembly. The system can be stopped in 2 milliseconds and is designed to use different fuel materials and enrichment levels, including thorium. Subcriticality offers a wider safety margin and enables more efficient burning of existing long‑lived nuclear waste; when thorium is used it will not produce plutonium and other long‑lived waste. Combined with innovative spent-fuel recycling technology, the company says the system can be made sustainable for energy production over centuries. Founded on 29 July 2019 and based in Geneva, Switzerland, Transmutex intends to use the new funds to further develop its solution. It raised over CHF 20M in an extension of its Series A. Transmutex is developing a breakthrough nuclear energy process technology that originated at CERN. The technology is designed to be intrinsically safe, reduce the stockpile of long-lived waste, resist military proliferation, and be cost-competitive. The company has partnered with leading research centres and industry players to advance development. Transmutex aims to deliver a pilot nuclear plant within a decade. The company is based in Geneva and positions its work in service of sustainability goals. Financially, Transmutex recently received a CHF 100,000 seed loan from the Fongit Innovation Fund (FIF). Transmutex develops accelerator-based nuclear technology to transmute long-lived radioactive waste into different elements, reducing the radioactivity of the most dangerous waste by a factor of 1,000. Its process uses particle accelerators and a thorium-fuel approach to both reduce waste and produce carbon-free energy that can be reinjected into the grid or used to produce green hydrogen. The company presents its design as a more secure reactor concept than existing ones and aims to enable scalable carbon-free energy without the traditional challenges of nuclear plants. The underlying technologies have been tested at CERN, and Transmutex has a collaboration agreement with the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) to access nuclear safety expertise, fuel-cycle analysis, spallation target design, and cyclotron operation. Transmutex was co-founded in 2019 in Geneva and has advanced R&D through external funding, including a CHF 2.6 million seed round closed in May 2020. The new CHF 5.3 million financing brings the company’s total equity capital to CHF 8 million since January 2020 and will be used to accelerate research and development activities.