First Light Fusion, an Oxford-based fusion energy company, said it raised US$45mln in its latest round of funding.
The series-C funding was open to existing and new investors, which included entertainment conglomerate Tencent Holdings Limited (HKG:0700, OTC:TCEHY), FTSE 250-listed IP Group PLC (LSE:IPO) and private investment firm Bravos Capital
The fundraising follows a year of expansion as the the company procured, installed and commissioned a two-stage hyper-velocity gas gun nicknamed the “Big Friendly Gun” (BFG), which at 22 metres long and weighing 25,000 kg, is the largest of its kind in the UK.
The BFG fires a 100g projectile at a velocity of 6.5 km/s or 14,500 mph (about 20 times the speed of sound) into the 'target', the centrepiece of First Light’s unique technology.
First Light said the BFG complements its electromagnetic launch device, Machine 3, enabling the team to explore a different parameter space by launching “larger but slower” projectiles.
The company plans to use the funding to accelerate its “gain” experiment, and to perform further design and engineering work on a commercial fusion energy power plant.
“We remain very confident in our technology, our people and the potential of our unique approach," Dr Nick Hawker, chief executive officer, said. "We continue to believe our inertial confinement approach offers the fastest and above all, most cost competitive route to grid ready fusion energy.”
The wider UK fusion energy sector is also in somewhat of a purple patch.
Last week, scientists in the UK at the Joint European Torus (JET) facility near Oxford doubled the previous record for energy generated by Fusion power, delivering 59 megajoules for five seconds.
First Light Fusion was spun out from the University of Oxford in 2011 to address the need to decarbonise the global energy system.
First Light’s inertial confinement approach aims to create the extreme temperatures and pressures required for fusion by compressing a target using a hypervelocity projectile, according to the company.
Unlike existing nuclear, there is no long-lived waste, no meltdown risk, and raw materials can be found in abundance.