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The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Livermore-based fusion energy startup company Inertia took major steps toward commercializing fusion energy this month, announcing one of the national lab system’s largest-ever private-public partnerships aimed at bridging the gap between scientific theory and commercial application.
The partnership plus a $450 million funding round for Inertia – which was established in 2024 with the goal of developing a pilot fusion energy plant following the lab’s breakthrough in fusion ignition in 2022 – mark significant milestones for the company just months after it publicly announced its formation last fall.
“Decades of public investment in fusion science have created a foundation that only America’s national labs could have built,” Inertia CEO and co-founder Jeff Lawson said in a press release from the company April 14. “Inertia exists to take that foundation and do what the private sector does best: build at scale and deliver commercial impact. This partnership with LLNL ensures we’re doing that with the full weight of their scientific expertise behind us.”
The company was founded by Lawson alongside Stanford professor and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory director Mike Dunne and longtime LLNL researcher Annie Kritcher, who continues to serve as a leading designer of fusion experiments.
“We are committed to ensuring that the 60 years of public investment, fusion leadership, and scientific breakthroughs achieved here don’t stay in the laboratory,” LLNL Director Kim Budil said in the press release. “This agreement, along with other public-private partnerships, is how we accelerate that effort.”
“This partnership positions LLNL’s world-leading expertise in inertial fusion science, laser technology, physics design, and target fabrication to directly inform the industrial-scale development that commercial fusion demands,” she continued.
Commercializing fusion energy is a trend that has accelerated in recent years and months following the lab’s achievements in developing the technology and launching a series of successful experiments starting in 2022.
In October, the Department of Energy launched the first step in a fusion science and technology roadmap, providing a “strategy to align public investment and private innovation to deliver commercial fusion power to the grid by the mid-2030s.” Months later, it announced a new Office of Fusion aimed at facilitating commercialization of the technology.
Those measures seek to advance the Unleashing American Energy executive order signed by President Donald Trump on the first day of his second administration on Jan. 20, 2025, according to an announcement from the DOE last fall.
“For the first time, DOE, industry, and our National Labs will be aligned with a shared purpose—to accelerate the path to commercial fusion power and strengthen America’s leadership in energy innovation,” DOE officials said on Oct. 16. “Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, the Department is streamlining the full strength of the U.S. scientific and industrial base to deliver fusion energy faster than ever before.”
It is unclear when additional steps in the roadmap might be finalized and unveiled, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, noting that the first step of the roadmap centers on actions that will “close science and technology gaps to commercially relevant fusion pilot plants.”
Officials anticipate that the second part will provide further details on timelines and metrics, with part three expected to provide internal tools for tracking progress and evaluating decisions.
Until those steps are unveiled, it will also remain unclear whether the roadmap conforms with the office’s recommendation that “the Director of the Office of Science should finalize and implement ongoing fusion energy planning efforts, including by specifying roles and responsibilities, responding to identified risks, and detailing metrics and timelines for its initiatives.”
What has become clear in the months since, however, is that the race is on to develop a commercial fusion energy plant, with numerous private companies besides Inertia being driven by the same mission, as well as billions of investment money pouring into the industry over the past year.
As of this week, the frontrunner in that race is MIT-spinoff Commonwealth Fusion Systems according to its CEO, who told Reuters on April 21 that the company expects to begin construction on a commercial fusion energy plant next year. However, following a $6 billion acquisition by the Trump Media and Technology Group in December, the Orange County-based TAE Technologies announced that it expected to begin construction on a fusion power plant this year.
While those two companies both have a headstart on Inertia – Commonwealth was established in 2018, and TAE in 1998 – Kritcher said that her experience at the lab along with the new partnership made her confident in the fledgling company’s position.
“Ignition at LLNL showed this approach to fusion works,” Kritcher said on April 14. “At Inertia, we now get to build on that foundation and push it to industrial scale. There’s no better team positioned to take this on than the Inertia team, working closely together with the LLNL teams through these robust partnerships, enabling moving quickly from day one.”
Under the deal, the Livermore lab and startup entered into two strategic partnership projects and a cooperative research and development agreement, as well as a licensing agreement for nearly 200 patents related to fusion technology and exclusive rights for some key inventions, according to Inertia’s press release.
The new partnership serves as a model of what the DOE has been seeking to accomplish in its steps toward advancing the commercialization of fusion energy, according to the head of the DOE’s recently established fusion office.
“Through partnerships like this one, we are bringing together the full strength of our National Labs, private industry, and the broader innovation ecosystems to move from breakthrough to deployment,” said Jean Paul Allain, director of the DOE Office of Fusion.
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