Hard Krypton Exclusive | Nuclear fusion enterprise completes 1.2 billion yuan financing, backed by Meituan Longzhu and GL Ventures, post-money valuation exceeds 10 billion yuan
36Kr has learned that nuclear fusion enterprise Nova Fusion recently completed its Pre-A series financing with a total amount of 1.2 billion yuan. Meituan Longzhu and GL Ventures continued to increase their investment, while Lenovo Capital and China Capital Investment joined as new strategic investors. This round of financing will provide sufficient capital reserve for the parallel promotion of Q>1 net fusion energy output verification and supporting facilities for commercial power stations in the next step.
Nova Fusion was founded only 16 months ago, with cumulative financing reaching 2.4 billion yuan and post-investment valuation exceeding 10 billion yuan, currently ranking the highest among domestic private fusion enterprises.
Its founder Dr. Guo Houyang is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the pioneer inventor of FRC-SMR small modular fusion technology. In the tokamak field, he has deeply participated in and led the largest tokamak projects in China, the United States and the European Union. In the FRC field, he once served as the experimental director of the largest FRC research program of the U.S. Department of Energy, and the chief scientist and head of experimental R&D of TAE, the world's largest FRC energy company.
The company has now gathered more than 60 elites from various fields, and all core links are led by senior chief experts from top domestic and foreign scientific research institutes, leading sci-tech innovation enterprises and well-known universities, accurately covering the entire core technology chain of FRC-SMR.
"In the past, some people questioned the cohesion of our team, but this year we quickly formed a team with strong strength. Now our team has a structure combining old, middle-aged and young talents. We have not only built the device, but also cultivated a group of middle-level team members. When building the next device, these young people will be able to rush to the front line." said Guo Houyang.
The device mentioned by Guo Houyang is "Nova No.1", which has completed engineering design and core component development, and entered the final assembly and integration stage. Guo Houyang introduced that the implementation of this device did not come easily, thanks to the team's breakthrough in key core technologies, which is also a major progress made by Nova Fusion in the past few months. The first is the R&D of high-power all-solid-state switching power supply. "We have overcome the dual performance bottlenecks of solid-state switch peak current and current rise rate (dI/dt), far exceeding the current performance upper limit of commercial solid-state semiconductor switches, which can significantly reduce the overall R&D cost of pulsed power supplies and improve system reliability."
The second is the design of modular high-field magnets, which can effectively increase the compression magnetic field strength and extend the magnetic field freewheeling time, not only reducing the investment in supporting power supply construction, but also prolonging the maintenance time of FRC plasma. In terms of domestic manufacturing of large quartz vacuum chambers, Nova has cooperated with top domestic special material manufacturing enterprises to develop and produce the largest linear and conical quartz vacuum chambers in China.
The last one is the nanosecond high-fidelity control and acquisition system. Nova has independently developed a nanosecond timing deterministic control, high-fidelity and high-precision plasma control and data acquisition system, adopting an all-optical communication architecture to completely isolate strong electromagnetic environment interference and adapt to the extremely complex working conditions of fusion devices.
Guo Houyang told 36Kr that all the key components in the above four directions have been independently developed and put into use. At present, key components such as high-power all-solid-state pulsed power supplies and magnets have entered mass production. The technological breakthrough not only enables the device to be put into operation, but as the first domestic enterprise to take the FRC-SMR route, Nova has also filled the gap in the relevant domestic supply chain.
At present, the auxiliary systems of Nova No.1, including vacuum pumping, diagnosis and fuel feeding, have been finalized, the baking test platform is ready, and the civil engineering foundation has been completed. The team is sprinting for the first plasma discharge at the end of 2026, and aiming to become the first private enterprise in China to achieve a fusion temperature of 100 million ℃ in 2027. Guo Houyang said that Nova aims to achieve deuterium-tritium equivalent fusion net energy gain Q>1 by 2029, and hopes to build a 50-100MW commercial demonstration power station in the first half of the 2030s.
(Source: Enterprise)
The following is an excerpt from the interview between 36Kr and Guo Houyang, founder of Nova Fusion:
36Kr: In the next few years, will Nova consider expanding the breakthrough technologies to fields beyond fusion to achieve commercialization?
Guo Houyang: We have such considerations. At present, our financing volume is relatively large, so we can allocate part of the funds to expand to other fields, and provide these products to other industries in need. For example, technologies related to high-power pulsed power supplies can be extended to nuclear medicine, electromagnetic ejection, rail transit, electric power and energy storage and other fields.
36Kr: What is the most critical acceptance index of Nova No.1?
Guo Houyang: 100 million ℃ is a very critical hard indicator — it is the basic temperature condition for realizing controlled nuclear fusion reaction, and also the key scientific premise for achieving net fusion energy gain Q>1 in the next step. Once we take the lead in achieving Q>1, its milestone significance will far exceed the indicator itself. Because we directly convert current into magnetic field, and realize efficient heating of plasma through magnetic compression, the energy loss in the middle is relatively small. After fusion is generated, the fusion energy can be directly converted into electric energy. Once Q>1 is broken through, it is one step away from net power generation — we only need to make Q reach about 1.5, while other routes may need to achieve Q>20.
36Kr: What kind of promotion mode will Nova adopt for the next R&D and construction?
Guo Houyang: The most important thing for us now is not the pure technical problem, but the time problem.
Fusion is like a marathon, and we are now at the last 100 meters. There are indeed many technical problems left to be solved and iterated, but in our view, these problems are all solvable, which only require time and experience. So we do not adopt the traditional series mode, but the parallel mode. That is to say, before the first step is completed, we will start the second step. For example, we plan to achieve 100 million ℃ next year, and before achieving that, we will start the construction of Nova No.2 in advance, instead of waiting for Nova No.1 to be fully completed before moving on to the next step.
At the same time, we are prospectively demonstrating the overall forward-moving plan for the construction of the fusion demonstration reactor, and the early stage will still achieve the Q>1 target required by Nova No.2. After achieving Q>1, we do not need to build a new device from scratch, but further upgrade it to the next 50MW power station by upgrading the power supply system, control system and other components.
This can save several years of construction time and achieve the goal at the fastest speed. According to this idea, we hope to complete the construction of the fusion demonstration reactor by 2030.
Investor's View:
Wang Xinyu, Partner of Meituan Longzhu, said: FRC adapts to the future ultra-large-scale and rapidly expanding AIDC power demand. Longzhu is confident in the engineering roadmap of Nova Fusion, and hopes to accompany and support the outstanding member enterprises to grow and develop in the long run.
Shi Chenxing from Lenovo Capital said: The nuclear fusion market will reach a trillion-yuan scale in the future, which is the main battlefield of competition between China and the United States. The national team focuses on the steady development of tokamak, while the private enterprise Nova takes a unique FRC approach. In the future, the steady-state continuous operation of tokamak will be responsible for large-scale power supply, and the cost of FRC-SMR is only 1/100 of that of tokamak, which is naturally suitable for distributed energy supply for AI, rockets, space and other scenarios. Dr. Guo Houyang, the founder, is one of the pioneer inventors of the FRC technology route. Nova has become the absolute leader in the track in terms of team, technology, financing amount and valuation, lighting up the human technology tree with the light of fusion!
The investment team of China Capital Investment said: Nuclear fusion is the ultimate energy solution in the future, the high ground of great power competition, and also a future industry clearly defined in the national plan. Especially under the current AI wave, as an important AIDC power supply solution, controlled nuclear fusion has long-term certainty and high growth potential. The FRC technology route selected by Nova has the advantages of simple structure, low cost and rapid iteration, and has been technically verified. It is a controlled nuclear fusion technical solution that may achieve overtaking on the curve of tokamak in the future and is more suitable for venture capital to enter. Founder Dr. Guo Houyang has many years of accumulation in FRC technology, and is the founder and technical source of the FRC-SMR route. The company's team is professional, experienced and has strong technical capabilities. We believe that Nova Fusion has the potential to achieve technological breakthroughs in fusion and grow into a leading domestic nuclear fusion enterprise, which is an excellent hard tech project worthy of forward-looking layout.