fusion-energy
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Thea Energy
Thea Energy is a New Jersey fusion power company building a simplified, mass-manufacturable stellarator. Instead of the exotic, millimeter-precise 3D magnet coils that defined earlier stellarators, Thea uses arrays of small, planar high-temperature-superconductor electromagnets steered by software - shifting complexity from hardware fabrication to control code. Spun out of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory in 2022, the company is building Eos, a neutron-source stellarator meant to prove power-plant-relevant performance and generate near-term revenue, ahead of its first commercial plant, Helios.
Ara Knaian
Ara Knaian is an MIT-trained electrical engineer and inventor on more than 36 U.S. patents who now runs Acceleron Fusion, a Cambridge company chasing energy from muon-catalyzed fusion - a route that runs closer to 1,000 degrees C instead of the 100-million-degree plasmas everyone else fights. Before fusion he co-founded the product-design firm NK Labs, architected Google's modular Project Ara phone, tuned the drive waveforms behind Amazon's Kindle, and built the Milli-Motein, a self-folding robot chain at MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms. Acceleron raised a $24M Series A led by Lowercarbon Capital and Collaborative Fund and logged over 100 hours of continuous fusion at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland.
James Dorris
James Dorris is the co-founder and CEO of Odys Aviation, a Long Beach company building long-range, hybrid-electric VTOL aircraft that take off and land like a helicopter but cruise like an airplane. A former fusion physicist who started at MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center, he helped build the propulsion and levitation tech at Virgin Hyperloop One before turning to flight. At Odys he is chasing aircraft that can lift off from a helipad, fly up to 1,000 miles on a hybrid system, and cut regional travel emissions sharply while serving defense, logistics, and passenger markets.
Acceleron Fusion, Inc.
Acceleron Fusion is a Cambridge, Massachusetts deep-tech company reviving muon-catalyzed fusion, a phenomenon first observed in the 1950s, as a path to abundant clean energy. Instead of confining a 100-million-degree plasma, Acceleron fires a beam of muons - subatomic particles roughly 200 times heavier than electrons - at highly compressed deuterium-tritium fuel, triggering fusion at temperatures closer to 500-1,000 C. Founded in 2023 by NK Labs veterans Ara Knaian and Seth Newburg and backed by a $24M Series A from Lowercarbon Capital and Collaborative Fund, the company is building two core technologies: a high-efficiency muon source and a high-density fusion cell, with the goal of a fusion power plant that beats natural gas on cost.
Vinod Khosla
Vinod Khosla (born January 28, 1955, in Pune, India) is one of Silicon Valley's most influential entrepreneurs and venture capitalists - a self-made billionaire who co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982, then went on to back transformative companies including OpenAI, DoorDash, Instacart, Stripe, Affirm, and Impossible Foods through his firm Khosla Ventures, which manages approximately $15 billion in capital. Known for his contrarian, 'black swan' investment philosophy, uncompromising directness, and audacious predictions - including that AI will replace 80% of all jobs by 2030 and make core services like healthcare and education free by 2040 - Khosla frames his life's work not as wealth creation but as deploying technology to solve civilization-scale problems. A Giving Pledge signatory with a net worth of $13.4 billion (Forbes, January 2026), he is also a philanthropist whose wife Neeru's CK-12 Foundation has reached over 130 million learners globally, and who prefers the title 'venture assistant' to 'venture capitalist.'