USA support German start-up

“The Darmstadt-based nuclear fusion specialist Focused Energy is very popular – and not just in Washington.

The Darmstadt start-up company Focused Energy has been accepted by the American Department of Energy into the multi-million dollar support group for the development of new energy sources.

According to this, the company, which specializes in nuclear fusion, will be co-financed for at least a year and a half from a total funding pot of 46 million dollars.

The subsidies are intended to help develop economically reliable and ecologically harmless ways of generating energy.

For this purpose, the Americans examined two dozen of the most promising companies in a process lasting several months and finally selected eight companies. “By funding, the US government, along with its fusion experts from various leading laboratories, is committed to our laser-based approach to the commercialization of nuclear fusion,” said Founders of Focused Energy, Thomas Forner, CEO, and his fellow board member Markus Roth.

Focused Energy is one of those companies that are also known as deep tech. On the one hand, the focus is on basic research, which still needs to be further developed for application, with considerable scientific and technical challenges - such as quantum, nano or biotechnology. On the other hand, deep tech companies do not primarily target consumer markets, but rather the so-called business-to-business (B2B) business.

Market maturity can take many years

With its diverse research landscape, Germany has a lot to offer. The institutes, colleges and universities in Munich, Darmstadt, Aachen, Heidelberg and Potsdam are particularly active here. However, unlike the Americans and the Chinese, the Germans still find it somewhat difficult to bring the results of their research work to the markets in the form of products or services.

However, fusion research is still years, if not decades, away from being ready for the market. However, some notable advances have been made in this area recently.

It was not until December 2022 that researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California succeeded for the first time in nuclear fusion using laser ignition with a net energy gain. Like the Livermore researchers, Focused Energy relies on laser-based nuclear fusion. Some of the leading scientists from Livermore also work for Focused Energy.

In March, the federal German innovation agency Sprind announced that it would invest up to 90 million euros in laser fusion.

  These include special lasers, instruments for evaluating the experiments and computers for so-called plasma simulation. Focused Energy is also very popular with the Germans. "A functioning and economically viable fusion power plant would be a real leap forward," Sprind director Rafael Laguna said at the time."

 

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