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Fusion power got another boost on Monday as Google announced it will buy half the output of Commonwealth Fusion System\u2019s first commercial power plant.<\/p>\n
Commonwealth Fusion Systems<\/a> (CFS) will send Google 200 megawatts of electricity from its Arc power plant, which is expected to come online in the early 2030s. Meanwhile, Google is sending CFS a check as part of a new, unannounced funding round.<\/p>\n The new round will be \u201ccomparable\u201d to the previous one, CFS co-founder and CEO Bob Mumgaard said. CFS\u2019s most recent funding round, \u00a0a Series B that Google participated in and that brought in $1.8 billion, closed in 2021. The company has raised the most of any fusion startup<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s a very strong demand signal,\u201d said Mumgaard. \u201cThis investment allows us to do some of the R&D that will enable us to go into Arc faster.\u201d<\/p>\n CFS is building a demonstration reactor, known as Sparc, just outside of Boston. That facility will be completed in 2026, according to Mumgaard. Arc, the company\u2019s commercial power plant, will be built near Richmond, Virginia<\/a>.<\/p>\n The new deal marks only the second time a major company has agreed to buy power from a fusion startup. The first was signed in 2023 when Microsoft agreed to buy the output of Helion\u2019s first commercial power plant, which is scheduled to come online in 2028.<\/p>\n Like other hyperscalers, Google has been scouring the globe for new sources of electricity. AI and cloud services have ignited a surge in data center construction, driving a new wave of electricity demand along with it. One forecast expects that data center power demand will double by the end of the decade<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cTo power all this, we know that we\u2019re going to need to make big bets in this next frontier of energy innovation,\u201d said Michael Terrell, Google\u2019s head of advanced energy.<\/p>\n Google thinks of its energy investments across three time horizons, Terrell said. In the short term, the company has prioritized solar, wind, and batteries. A bit farther out, it\u2019s betting on geothermal and small modular nuclear reactors, as evidenced by its investments in geothermal startup Fervo Energy<\/a> and nuclear startup Kairos Power<\/a>.<\/p>\n Fusion energy is a bit further out, and that \u201cwould certainly put this [CFS investment] in the long term category,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Google bought 8 gigawatts of renewable power in 2024, twice what it puchased in 2023. And while solar, wind, and batteries have been the main additions to Google\u2019s portfolio in recent years, Terrell told TechCrunch that the company will need other power sources to allow its data centers to operate 24\/7.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s definitely a path with wind and solar and storage in regions where the resource is very strong,\u201d he said, citing places like the Midwest, which has consistent winds, and the Southwest, which has mostly cloud-free skies. But other places, like the Southeastern U.S. and many counties in the Asia-Pacific region might be too cloudy or their power grids too fragmented to make traditional renewables work.<\/p>\n To compensate for those shortfalls, one approach is to overbuild wind and solar, but that can get expensive quickly.<\/p>\n Technologies like fusion \u201cactually bring the cost down of achieving high penetrations of carbon free energy,\u201d Terrell said. \u201cIf you have these clean, firm technologies \u2014 even if they\u2019re more expensive on a per megawatt-hour basis \u2014 if you\u2019re sort of folding those into the portfolio, it actually brings your overall portfolio costs down.\u201d<\/p>\n Mumgaard is confident that CFS can deliver power to Google in less than a decade, and when that happens, he thinks that demand for fusion will skyrocket.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cIt doesn\u2019t depend on geography or weather, doesn\u2019t depend on access to special materials. It\u2019s something that you could run 24\/7,\u201d he said. \u201cWe expect that fusion can have a really big payoff because once it\u2019s shown that you can do this and you have a first power plant up and running, you could scale it. You could build this around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n