In its quest to develop commercial fusion power, General Fusion just reached another milestone with what it is describing as an oversubscribed $166 million CAD ($130 million USD) Series E funding round.
This is the second Series E funding round the company has announced. In 2019, the company said it closed an $85 million CAD ($65 million USD) Series E round. The company did not disclose whether the new investment of $166 million includes the $85 million from 2019.
General Fusion did not respond to BetaKit’s queries by time of publication. It is not known when the round closed.
Temasek led the round with a number of individual investors participating. The latter included Jeff Bezos, Tobi Lütke, and Kam Ghaffarian.
Others investors included GIC, the Jameel Investment Management Company (JIMCO), the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), and a large United States (US) pension plan and the hedge fund firm Segra Capital.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ venture capital group, Bezos Expeditions has previously invested in General Fusion.
General Fusion management said the latest round of funding is the prelude to a large financing round being prepared for 2022. Combined with broad financial support from the Canadian, United Kingdom, and US governments, the General Fusion Series E round supports the “aggressive pursuit” of several near-term initiatives and milestones in its program to commercialize fusion power.
RELATED: General Fusion to expand HQ in Richmond, BC and quadruple workforce
Michel Laberge founded General Fusion in 2002 with the aim to shift the world’s energy supply by developing a fast, practical, and cost-competitive path to commercial fusion power. Fusion power is a proposed form of power generation that generates electricity by using heat from nuclear fusion reactions.
The company claims fusion is a limitless, clean, emission-free, and cost-competitive alternative for power generation.
With substantial capital support from both private and government sources, General Fusion has worked to deploy its power-plant scale fusion demonstration plant located at the UK Atomic Energy Authority’s (UKAEA) Culham Centre for Fusion Energy near London.
Funding for the demonstration plant arrived in the form of a $49.3 million investment from the federal government in 2018.
In October General Fusion partnered with Vancouver International Airport to relocate and expand its headquarters to Richmond, British Columbia.
The 60,000 square foot facility will be located at the airport on Sea Island, with General Fusion intending to move in before the end of 2021. According to the company, this relocation will allow General Fusion to quadruple its workforce over the next few years. The company currently has over 100 employees.