Inertia Enterprises and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) are teaming up to turn a scientific breakthrough into a real-world energy source. This new partnership is one of the biggest between a private company and a U.S. national lab.

It comes at a good time for Inertia, which just raised $450 million. The goal is to take the fusion technology developed at LLNL and find a way to make it work for the power grid. So far, LLNL is the only place where fusion has been proven to produce more energy than it consumes.

Fusion For the Power Grid

The deal includes a massive licensing agreement that gives Inertia access to nearly 200 patents. The two groups are working together on three specific projects to figure out how to build a commercial power plant.

One major focus is the fuel targets, the tiny capsules that make the fusion reaction happen. Right now, these are high-tech lab components. To make fusion work for everyone, they need to be manufactured quickly and cheaply.

“Decades of public investment in fusion science have created a foundation that only America’s national labs could have built. Inertia exists to take that foundation and do what the private sector does best: build at scale and deliver commercial impact,” said Jeff Lawson, CEO and co-founder of Inertia.

Finding New Ways to Work

Dr. Andrea “Annie” Kritcher, who helped lead the team that reached the “ignition” milestone at LLNL, is a co-founder at Inertia. Thanks to the CHIPS and Science Act, she can work at both places to make sure the transition from the lab to the factory stays on track.

“After more than two decades at LLNL working on inertial fusion and high-energy-density physics, designing the first burning, ignited, and gain >1 fusion plasmas and serving as lead for integrated modeling in the Inertial Confinement Fusion Program,” Dr. Kritcher explained. “I’ve always asserted that realizing this at scale requires a deep partnership with the lab to fully leverage the capability and experience.”