Marvel Fusion gets $70M in fusion powered laser bet

When it comes to fusion energy, there are two basic ways: First, create a small star here on Earth that is held in a magnetic field. Second, use strong lasers to create a sequence of small stars, but repeat the process several times per second.

Moritz von der Linden likes to disagree with the latter. In the world’s race to wean itself off fossil fuels, fusion power promises an unlimited supply of energy, using widely available materials to recreate conditions hotter than the surface of the sun.

But many analysts believe that commercial hybrid power is at least a decade away, and is up against renewable energy and battery storage, which are getting cheaper every year. “Fusion has to come quickly and it has to be affordable,” the founder and CEO of Marvel Fusion told TechCrunch. Otherwise no one needs it, and no one will pay for it.

Marvel Fusion is one of several companies pursuing what is known as inertial confinement fusion. It’s the same basic technique used at the National Ignition Facility, a Department of Energy lab that proved in 2022 that a controlled fusion reaction could produce more energy than needed to ignite it. That’s a useful milestone for any startup pursuing the strangest technology to date.

But while NIF’s lasers are based on decades-old designs, Marvel uses state-of-the-art technology to improve the power and efficiency of its lasers. The startup will soon build a demonstration facility in collaboration with Colorado State University, where it hopes two 100-Joule lasers will prove its basic technology. Shovels hit dirt on October 16, and von der Linden expects it to be operational by early 2027.

Those lasers will fire faster than the blink of an eye — in the femtosecond range, or one millionth of a second — bombarding a nanostructured target with photons that blast its electrons and scatter positively charged ions. Those ions will then hit the Marvel fuel, which ignites the fusion reaction. Currently, the company uses a mixture of hydrogen and boron mainly, although von der Linden says the company is taking a “mixed fuel” approach to keep its options open in case a more profitable combination emerges.

Compared to the NIF fuel cartridge, which is placed in a one-centimeter gold hohlraum that takes two weeks to build and load, the Marvel fuel and target are designed for mass production. The fuel itself is solid at room temperature, making it easier to handle than NIF’s fel, which relies on frozen or cryogenically frozen hydrogen isotopes. Marvel’s target is simple, too, made of silicon, not gold.

“That was a wake-up call,” von der Linden said. “When the physics guys found out that silicon worked better, the guys they were targeting were like, ‘Hallelujah! We can use standard lithography from chip manufacturing.’” At the sizes Marvel aims to produce, about 50 to 80 nanometers per feature, the company can use semiconductor equipment that is up to ten years old. It can produce about 5,000 targets on a standard 300 millimeter wafer.

If the Colorado test goes as planned, the company will increase the power of both lasers in 2028 or 2029. To reach those milestones, Marvel recently raised €62.8 million in a Series B round, the company told TechCrunch exclusively. HV Capital led the round with participation from b2venture, BayernKapital, Deutsche Telekom, SPRIND, and Tenglemann Ventures. The company has also been nominated by the European Innovation Council for a grant of 2.5 million euros and an investment of up to €15 million, which if carried out will be an extension of this round.

Marvel’s first commercial-scale prototype should be completed around 2032 or 2033, von der Linden said, and will contain two lasers of between 10 and 20 kilojoules. “With 20 lasers, we have the ability to really accelerate the ions.” Each will fire ten times per second.

That will be the moment of truth. While the company’s Colorado location will be a useful landmark, “it’s like driving a Ferrari with a two-cylinder engine,” von der Linden said. “It’s going to move, but it’s not going to do what it’s supposed to do,” which in Marvel’s case is generating reactive power. If the full-scale prototype fires at all, er, lasers, then the startup has a chance of crossing the finish line of integration. The race is on.