Seattle, WA and Austin, TX- July 19, 2023—  ExoFusion, a startup focused on the shortest path to Commercially Viable Fusion (CVF) announces seed funding and ambitious plans for the “Super XT Divertor.”  Based in Seattle, WA and Austin, TX, the company will be expanding its focus on IP, licensing, and simulation in the hot area of Fusion.  ExoFusion believes that confinement is key to CVF.

ExoFusion was founded by Dr. Michael Kotschenreuther, Dr. Swadesh Mahajan, Dr. David, Hatch—all renowned physicists- and Romi Mahajan, a technology marketer and commercialization expert.  Doctors Kotschenreuther and Mahajan invented the Super X Divertor.  The company has a series of patents and a strong IP pipeline across divertor technologies, new materials, novel neutron sources, and a variety of other fundamental, fusion-related areas.

“Our company was founded on the notion that plasma confinement is key to CVF and our innovations have advanced the understanding of confinement a great deal,” said Chief Science Officer Mike Kotschenreuther.  “Our portfolio of patents, our roadmap, and our focus on simulation and licensing are the underpinnings of a powerful business model that will advance the fusion ecosystem and accelerate the path to CVF,” added CEO Romi Mahajan.

Asset Manager Russ Brown, a seed investor in ExoFusion, said “There are many promising fusion concepts out there, but cost-effective confinement remains a primary roadblock to commercial viability across the industry. ExoFusion’s patented “XF” technologies along with its Super XT Divertor will dramatically increase confinement for multiple concepts, enabling them to be smaller and more affordable—exactly what is needed to make fusion commercially viable.”

The private fusion space has garnered over $6 billion in investment over the past few years as the community seeks a way to provide a low-cost, carbon-mitigating, and relatively unlimited source of baseload power for the energy-hungry planet.  ExoFusion welcomes private partnerships and collaboration with public institutions as the path to CVF gets increasingly critical for humanity.

 “The team at ExoFusion created the Super X Divertor which we used for the MAST-Upgrade — this creative solution will be an integral part of future fusion plants,” said Dr. Steven Cowley, Director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and former Head of the UKAEA.

The amount of the seed round remains undisclosed; ExoFusion will be moving towards a larger funding round over the next 12 months.

More about ExoFusion

ExoFusion accelerates the path to Commercially Viable Fusion. With the latest science and proprietary innovation in confinement, ExoFusion’s design, and simulations backed by IP, significantly reduces the cost, time, and scale to achieve CVF.

Led by world-renowned physicists, technology commercializers, marketers and
finance experts, ExoFusion is making significant breakthroughs in the goal to realize CVF.

A guest blog by Romi Mahajan

In her path breaking book “The Entrepreneurial State”, Marianna Mazzucato argues cogently, and with plenty of evidence, that the State is the key actor in technology innovation and development. We use the words “the” and “key” purposely- for four reasons:

1. The State creates and/or underwrites new technologies with a long-term view.
2. The State’s investment and ongoing incentives limit private risk.
3. There is no private investor that can compete with the State with regard to pool of available capital.
4. The State’s investments are not measured with the same ROI calculations and over the same periods.

One can go-on (and on) but these four parameters themselves make the case. Mazzucato isn’t alone in her analysis- most scholars agree- though her ideas might seem anathema to those in the technology sector who like to excessively laud private “innovation” and simultaneously lambast “government.” We can discuss this victory of Public Relations later. Here, we are interested more in understanding this idea as it pertains to the march to Commercially Viable Fusion (CVF).

Fusion has been underwritten almost exclusively the State. For seven decades, the quest for CVF has been ongoing. The carriage of Fusion has been characterized by fits and starts, but the overall vector has been positive. For many, the quest for CVF is seen as a bottomless pit of investment, but others see this as the standard manner in which science progresses- a sort of punctuated equilibrium of change. Each success and each failure begets something better.

While the State might be the key actor, there is no suggestion that private investment and innovation is unnecessary; it is in fact crucial. Private investment typically comes later in the game, when the infrastructure and basic science undergirding technology innovation has been developed. So too with CVF.

At some point in the innovation and development cycle, a sufficient critical mass of knowledge, talent, and advanced methods generates interest in the private sector and propels investment in the space. At this point, the punctuation can begin in earnest, as a variety of both competing and collaborative players strive to push the industry forward rapidly and with hope of private profit as well as public benefit. That’s where we are with CVF today. It’s indeed a heady era.

At this stage, with the efflorescence of interest and investment, firms in the CVF space must be willing to share, collaborate, and enhance each other. The stakes are high. An ecosystem must be built with intention.

Clearly, there are competing ideas, some more solid than others (forgive the pun.) Clearly, there are companies that will fail and some that will succeed. But, as with science, both successes and failures advance the industry.

It is our time.