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Brian Berzin Is Turning Fusion's Twisty Donut Into a Software Problem
Thea Energy's CEO has an engineer's eye, an investor's discipline, and a decidedly practical question for fusion: what if the difficult part could move from sculpted metal into software?
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.
VEIR
VEIR is a Woburn, Massachusetts company commercializing high-temperature superconducting power lines that move 5 to 10 times more electricity than conventional cables at the same voltage and footprint. Its key breakthrough is a passive, evaporative liquid-nitrogen cooling system that keeps superconductors cold without heavy machinery. Founded in 2019 out of Breakthrough Energy Ventures research, VEIR targets utilities, renewable developers, and increasingly the power-hungry AI data center market. It closed a $75M Series B in January 2025 led by Munich Re Ventures, with backing from Microsoft's Climate Innovation Fund.