Fusion Startup Xcimer Raises $100M, Plans Laser Prototype

Fusion energy startup Xcimer Energy has raised $100 million in a series A financing round. The company plans to use the funds to establish a new facility in Denver where it will build a prototype laser system to advance the development of its laser-driven inertial fusion.

The company also plans to expand its technical team in Denver, where it recently moved the majority of its employees. Xcimer has also hired a senior vice president of engineering, Giovanni Greco, who will lead the companies engineering efforts beginning with the design, development, and manufacturing of the prototype laser system.

Xcimer Energy will use the funds raised from its series A financing round to establish a new facility in which it will build a prototype laser system for laser-driven inertial fusion. Courtesy of Xcimer Energy.

According to Xcimer, its laser architecture will produce up to 10x higher laser energy at 10x higher efficiency, and over 30x lower cost per joule than the National Ignition Facility (NIF) laser system that achieved fusion scientific breakeven in 2022. According to Xcimer, its planned prototype will include the world’s largest nonlinear optical pulse compression system.

The company’s stated goal is to extend the proven science of inertial fusion to an industrial scale by developing the world’s highest-energy laser system and combining it with key technologies and innovations from multiple fields. According to the company, it is building on laser technologies originally pursued for the Strategic Defense Initiative (a.k.a. “Star Wars”) defense programs of the 1980s to enable much higher laser energies, in turn enabling scaling the fusion performance achieved on the NIF to much higher gain, as well as other simplifications to the design of a laser fusion power plant.

In 2023, Xcimer was selected for a $9 million award from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program. Xcimer is also involved in the DOE’s three inertial fusion energy hubs in the Inertial Fusion Energy Science and Technology Accelerated Research (IFE-STAR) initiative, consisting of public and private organizations and government research labs.