Unlocking nuclear fusion - Future Planet Capital's journey with Tokamak Energy from a £25,000 proof-of-concept to raising more than £120 million in investment
“Unlocking the promise of fusion energy will transform the world for the better in so many ways. It is one of the most exciting business opportunities of the twenty-first century. But there is still a long journey from where we are today to profitability. Working alongside investors like Future Planet Capital – with patience, expertise, and global networks – has been critical in our success to date.”
In 2010 we provided a pathfinder investment of £25,000 to Tokamak Energy’s founders, becoming the first investor in the company and giving them the support to begin a journey that has seen the business become one of the UK’s most successful startups. For more than a decade, we have continued to actively support the business as it has grown, as a board member and key advisor.
During its most recent fundraising round in January 2020, Tokamak Energy received £67 million in investment, taking its total to over £120 million – the second largest amount for any cleantech business in the UK. Alongside this, the company has also attracted millions in government grant funding. This is being channeled into Tokamak’s work developing a device that can deliver on the promise of nuclear fusion – a source of cheap, safe, limitless clean energy, that harnesses the power of the sun.
Our initial investments into Tokamak Energy were made through the UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund (UKI2S), managed by Future Planet Capital, which has a mission to provide patient capital and support for businesses emerging from the UK’s publicly funded science and knowledge base. Through this fund, we bring our experience and networks to support the commercialisation of exciting new research coming out of the nation’s leading universities and research centres.
The UK Atomic Energy Authority’s Culham Centre for Fusion Energy is one of the world’s foremost centres of research on fusion energy, pioneering cutting-edge innovation in plasma physics and nuclear engineering. It was here that the three founders of Tokamak Energy – David Kingham, Mikhail Gryaznevich, and Alan Sykes – came together to develop a concept for commercially developing a fusion neutron device using a tokamak design. This is a concept first developed in the Soviet Union in the 1950s, that uses a doughnut-shaped device to confine plasma using a magnetic field, as an approach to achieve nuclear fusion.
Beyond power generation, the company’s technology has important applications in other areas, including particle accelerators and proton beam therapy, as well as providing valuable contributions to the development of industrial processes and broader scientific research.
Tokamak Energy is currently working on the engineering challenge of developing an advanced spherical tokamak device, that will ultimately be able to generate energy from plasma that reaches 150 million degrees Celsius, kept stable within a magnetic field created by superconductors.
In 2022 the business’s ST40 spherical tokamak design broke a world record, by generating plasma reaching temperatures of 100 million degrees Celsius. Its leaders predict that it will be able to demonstrate the capability to provide electricity to the grid from fusion power by the early 2030s.