Funding from new investor Future Ventures and returning investor Khosla Ventures follows the company’s record-breaking achievement of the highest magnetic field ever applied in a magnetic confinement experiment last July
MADISON, Wis., May 13, 2025 — Fusion energy startup Realta Fusion today announced an oversubscribed $36 million Series A round to bring its compact, scalable, modular magnetic mirror fusion technology closer to commercialization.
Future Ventures led the round with participation from Mayfield, GSBackers, SiteGround, Avila VC, and other investors. Existing Realta Fusion investors Khosla Ventures, Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, and TitletownTech also participated in the round.
“This funding allows us to validate our plasma simulations using real-world experimental data, bringing us dramatically closer to making fusion energy real,” said Realta Fusion CEO Kieran Furlong. “From there we will design a prototype fusion device that is as de-risked as you can get it, before we actually go build it. We aim to have it operating by 2028.”
The need for limitless energy
Today’s energy sources are insufficient to handle the increasing global demand in the decades to come. Fusion energy – which recreates the conditions that power the sun and stars – could provide nearly limitless power that is safe, reliable, and zero-carbon.
Compact, scalable, modular fusion energy systems
Realta Fusion’s device is a compact, scalable, modular (CoSMo™) fusion energy system, which offers the lowest cost and shortest pathway to commercial fusion energy. Realta Fusion’s energy system is designed to deliver industrial heat and power on-site for a wide range of applications, including data centers, chemical plants, metal recycling, remote mining, and other heavy industry.
The system is based on the compact magnetic mirror concept, in which extremely strong magnets trap super-heated hydrogen gas between two ends of a simple cylinder. Hydrogen atoms within the cylinder collide and fuse together, releasing massive amounts of carbon-free energy that can be delivered as heat or electricity.
Customer benefits of CoSMo™ fusion energy systems
CoSMo™ fusion energy systems offer clear benefits to industrial customers compared to other plasma confinement approaches:
- Compact: Relying on the latest generation of high temperature superconducting magnets allows Realta Fusion to build much more compact fusion energy systems, offering a substantially smaller footprint suitable for a wide variety of industrial sites.
- Scalable: Realta Fusion’s CoSMo™ energy systems would scale from 50MW to 500MW of power output. Multiple units can be used for very large applications, providing multiple paths to market for fusion energy.
- Modular: The cylindrical form of Realta Fusion’s energy systems allows them to scale linearly by inserting additional standard modules, which can be manufactured repeatedly and reliably at a central facility. This enables on-site assembly to match the specific power needs of customers across multiple industries at lower cost. Realta Fusion’s CoSMo™ energy systems would be manufactured in a factory setting and shipped on-site for assembly to match the specific power requirements of customers across multiple industries.
“As one of the few fusion startups that have demonstrated an actual operating plasma, they can be one of the leaders in this space,” said Future Ventures co-founder Steve Jurvetson, an early investor in Tesla, SpaceX, Planet, xAI, and D-Wave.
De-risked path to commercial fusion
With this funding, Realta Fusion will advance the physics of the experimental magnetic mirror fusion device currently operating at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and support the engineering and design of their own prototype CoSMo™ fusion energy system. Additionally, the company will continue to grow its team and complete plans for The Realta Forge – a purpose-built fusion R&D facility.
“Realta Fusion is taking a truly different approach by building compact, modular reactors that can scale to meet the needs of a wide range of customers and create multiple viable paths to market,” said Alice Brooks of Khosla Ventures. “We led their first seed round and are excited to continue backing Kieran and the team.”
Future Ventures co-founder Maryanna Saenko noted “We’re investing early in Realta Fusion because they’re charting a faster, more flexible path to commercial fusion. By focusing on compact magnetic mirror systems, Realta addresses a critical decarbonization need that larger projects aren’t targeting. It’s a nimble, application-driven strategy that could bring fusion benefits to market sooner.”
About Realta Fusion
Realta Fusion spun out of an experiment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy. The experiment was the first to use high temperature superconducting magnets in a magnetic mirror configuration and confined its first plasma at a world-record breaking magnetic field strength of 17 Tesla.
SOURCE Realta Fusion Inc
