Type One Energy Group, Inc.

Overview

Type One Energy Group, Inc. is a Knoxville, Tennessee company developing stellarator fusion power plants. Its materials say it was established in 2019, when colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison decided to form a company, and became venture-backed in 2023. Its website names three current staff as co-founders: John Canik, chief science officer; Chris Hegna, vice president of stellarator optimization; and David Anderson, vice president of systems engineering, who previously directed the university's Helically Symmetric eXperiment (HSX). Christofer Mowry, a former chief executive of General Fusion, joined as chief executive in 2023. Thomas Sunn Pedersen, chief technology officer, led stellarator edge and divertor physics at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, which runs Wendelstein 7-X, from 2011 to 2022, according to his company biography. Charlie Baynes-Reid is chief financial officer and general counsel. Bill Madia chairs the board, and former BP chief executive Bernard Looney joined it as an independent director in June 2026.

The company was in the Madison area until 2024. The Department of Energy listed it in Madison, Wisconsin, when it selected the company for a fusion award in May 2023, and in February 2024 Tennessee announced the headquarters move and a commitment of 330 jobs; the state's Nuclear Fund database records a $4.5 million grant to the company dated the same day. Type One also runs a magnet laboratory in Woburn, Massachusetts. It has never disclosed headcount; Fast Company placed it in the 51-to-200-employee band in March 2026.

The plan, which the company calls Project Infinity, puts two machines at Bull Run. Infinity One is a prototype the company describes as an engineering verification platform and a workforce training facility. Infinity Two is the power plant. Type One intends to supply technology to utilities: TechCrunch reported in January 2026 that TVA and other power providers would build, own and operate the plants.

Other agreements on the record carry no disclosed terms: pre-concept design work by AtkinsRéalis (July 2024), preliminary design engineering by AECOM (September 2025), a nonbinding lithium isotope supply agreement with Molten Salt Solutions reported by Heatmap in March 2026, and an August 2026 license of four Oak Ridge National Laboratory fuel-pellet inventions. In the UK, Type One formed the Infinity Fusion Consortium with Tokamak Energy and AECOM in May 2026 to develop a UK Infinity Two project; NEI Magazine reported construction could start in the early 2030s. No site has been named.

The stellarator design

A stellarator confines plasma with twisted, non-planar external magnet coils, where a tokamak relies in part on a large electric current driven through the plasma. Type One's September 2025 joint release with TVA calls the stellarator "currently the only fusion technology to have demonstrated stable, steady-state operation with high efficiency," a company claim. The coils are three-dimensional, and Type One plans to wind them from high-temperature superconducting (HTS) cable. The ARIES-CS compact stellarator study (UC San Diego, 2008) found results "quite sensitive to the details of 3-D shape" and that assembly and maintenance procedures can decide which technologies such a plant uses.

What has been built

Type One has not operated a plasma device of its own. HSX at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Wendelstein 7-X in Germany, where founders and staff worked, are institutional machines. The company's hardware record is superconducting cable and magnets, all of it reported by the company, with no independent test report located.

The first work was ARPA-E award DE-AR0001287, a $1.18 million grant from 2020 to 2023 to demonstrate a non-planar HTS stellarator magnet, carried out with MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. USASpending records $831,039 paid out. Anderson's 2025 deck reports three development cables (a 2 m straight cable, a 2 m non-planar cable and a 6.25 m four-turn coil) whose critical currents in 77 K tests were "within error bars of predictions." In February 2025 Type One took an exclusive license to Commonwealth Fusion Systems' HTS cable technology, on undisclosed terms.

Magnet Zero, which the company calls the first non-planar, high-field HTS stellarator magnet, joins four coils in one assembly, two of them non-planar cable-in-plate windings. Type One announced in April 2025 that early tests at 77 K, the temperature of liquid nitrogen, at its Woburn laboratory "confirm the essential design elements," without figures. The planned next step was a test at MIT's magnet facility at 20 K in supercritical helium, at 32 kA, "aiming to reach 8 T peak magnetic field" in "the coming months," according to the July 2025 deck. No result of that test had been published as of October 6, 2026. The February 2026 year-in-review post mentions only a "successful 77K magnet test" and places it at MIT; the April 2025 release placed the 77 K tests in Woburn.

The stellarator field as a whole has not reached the conditions Infinity Two assumes. Wendelstein 7-X set a record for the triple product in long discharges in May 2025, sustained for 43 seconds, and reached 3% plasma beta against a power-plant target of 4% to 5%, its operator IPP reported. IPP notes that, counting unpublished JET data, W7-X and JET are joint leaders on that measure. No stellarator has operated on D-T fuel, reached a burning plasma, or produced more fusion energy than it consumed. Among tokamaks, JET produced a record 69 MJ of fusion energy in a 5.2-second D-T pulse in October 2023 (announced in February 2024). No magnetic confinement device of any kind has reached Q above 1. The laser-driven National Ignition Facility reached target gain in December 2022.

Two earlier stellarator builds give cost reference points. Princeton's NCSX was canceled in 2008 after about $92 million had been spent, when its estimated cost had risen from about $75 million in 2002 to $170 million. Princeton's dean of research said the device, "with large forces and very tight tolerance requirements, was more difficult to assemble than had originally been estimated." IPP puts Wendelstein 7-X at €460 million of investment from 1995 to its final configuration in 2021, or €1.44 billion including site, staff and operations.

TVA and Bull Run

Bull Run was a single-unit coal plant in Anderson County that came online in 1967 and retired on December 1, 2023. TDEC places it in Clinton; press coverage of its retirement places it in Claxton. TVA's fiscal 2025 10-K says TVA is converting the retired plant into a synchronous condenser.

The relationship has built up in steps. TVA, Type One and Oak Ridge National Laboratory signed a memorandum of understanding in 2023. In February 2024 Type One announced that Infinity One would be built at Bull Run; World Nuclear News reported that construction "could begin in 2025," once environmental reviews, partnership agreements, permits and operating licenses were complete. A February 2025 cooperative agreement covered joint planning for a potential TVA fusion plant, including siting, environmental review and licensing. It was linked to a separate arrangement giving Type One access to TVA's Power Service Shops in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, for manufacturing.

On September 19, 2025, TVA issued a letter of intent stating its interest in "the potential deployment" of Type One's plant at Bull Run "once it is commercially ready." The release sets the terms: "Final decisions and definitive agreements regarding the funding and construction of Infinity Two, as well as any agreements to purchase the energy output, are subject to TVA Board approval, regulatory review, and alignment with TVA's least-cost planning processes and American energy dominance strategy."

TVA's own filing records one contract. The fiscal 2025 Form 10-K, filed November 13, 2025, says that "In 2025, Type One Energy entered into a service contract with TVA under which TVA's Power Service Shops will develop custom welding and fabrication techniques and create parts for Type One's project." It states no power purchase or offtake commitment for Type One. The same passage does state TVA's 50 MW purchase agreement for Kairos Power's Hermes 2. No TVA Board resolution on Type One was located.

Partners describe the arrangement more broadly. AECOM's September 2025 release calls the LOI "the world's first Letter of Intent to construct one or more of Type One's Infinity Two fusion power plants" and says AECOM and Type One "have already begun executing the first TVA contract for this project." No other source identifies that contract, its scope or its value. The trade site Neutron Bytes called the LOI event "the first commercial contracts signed for a utility-scale fusion power project in the US."

TVA's governance has changed around the letter. The board lacked a quorum for much of 2025 after President Trump removed three members between March and June. Don Moul, chief executive when the LOI was issued, announced his retirement effective July 1, 2026, and the board named Mike Skaggs interim president and chief executive in April 2026. The board's August 20, 2026 release approving the 2026 IRP, TVA's long-range resource plan, does not mention fusion, Type One or Bull Run, and no fusion capacity appears in coverage of that plan. No source links these changes to the Type One relationship.

In September 2026, Tennessee, TVA and the UK government announced expanded collaboration on fusion deployment, with no funding disclosed.

Funding

Three private financings are reported, the first in two closes. Breakthrough Energy Ventures, TDK Ventures and Doral Energy-Tech Ventures co-led a $29 million first close in March 2023. The company announced a final close in July 2024 at $82.4 million and calls it a seed round; TechCrunch's October 2026 report calls it an $82.5 million Series A extension. In January 2026 TechCrunch reported, citing sources, an $87 million convertible note; no company release on the note was found.

The $200 million Series B followed on October 6, 2026, co-led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Clutterbuck Capital with Lowercarbon Capital, Siemens Energy Ventures, SiteGround Capital and other new investors. The company says the money goes to its FusionDirect technology program and Project Infinity. TechCrunch had reported in January 2026 that Type One was raising a $250 million Series B at a $900 million pre-money valuation, which the company confirmed. Reuters reported that the company did not disclose the final valuation.

Totals in circulation disagree, and the company has published none. TechCrunch put total venture investment at "more than $160 million" after the January note. Its October report on the Series B gives the earlier round as $82.5 million and does not mention the note. Reuters wrote that the Series B "takes total funding to-date to more than $400 million." No source says whether the note converted into the Series B or sits alongside it, and this profile does not add the rounds together.

Public money is on the record separately. The Department of Energy's Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program award DE-SC0024888, "The high-field stellarator path to commercial fusion energy," shows $26,725,000 obligated and $3,000,000 paid out on USASpending, with performance from June 5, 2024 to June 4, 2027. The program pays on milestones and requires private cost share. A $9.5 million figure in circulation reflects an earlier obligation. The ARPA-E award was $1.18 million. Tennessee's Nuclear Fund database lists the $4.5 million grant as contracted, tied to 330 jobs and $223.5 million of capital investment in Anderson County.

No Form D by the company appears on EDGAR. A January 2026 Form D for Invext Type One Energy, a series of Invext LLC, reports $300,000 sold to one investor; it is a third-party vehicle buying exposure to the company and is not Type One funding.

Competitive position

Proxima Fusion of Munich has raised more than any other stellarator developer located. It announced a €411 million ($468 million) round in July 2026 at a €2.4 billion valuation, with RWE and Google as strategic investors, and puts its total at more than €650 million including €95 million of grants. Its Alpha demonstration machine is targeted for the early 2030s; in June 2025 the target was 2031. The Max Planck Society says Alpha also needs €1.2 billion of German federal funding that has not been committed. Thea Energy of New Jersey, which uses planar coils, raised a $100 million Series B in May 2026 and says it was the first Milestone awardee to complete a pre-conceptual design review, in January 2026. Helical Fusion in Japan reports about ¥6 billion ($38 million) including grants and loans.

Among tokamaks, Commonwealth Fusion Systems has raised about $4 billion and targets first plasma at SPARC in Devens, Massachusetts in 2027, with its roughly 400 MW ARC plant in Virginia in the early 2030s and a 200 MW Google offtake agreement. Helion Energy, which uses a pulsed field-reversed configuration rather than a tokamak, holds a 2023 power purchase agreement with Microsoft for a plant then due online by 2028. It announced a $465 million Series G in June 2026 and closed the round at $500 million in September. Its Polaris machine is the first privately funded fusion device to run on D-T fuel, by Helion's account; Helion has not published net electricity from it.

The Fusion Industry Association, a trade group whose figures are company-reported, counted $4.48 billion raised by 56 companies in the 12 months to July 2026 and five companies with power purchase agreements. No PPA for Type One is on the public record. Reuters, citing PitchBook data, called Type One's round the sector's third-biggest Series B in five years.

Regulation and policy

Federal fusion regulation sits under the byproduct material framework rather than the one for fission reactors. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission chose that route in April 2023, and the ADVANCE Act of July 2024 added a definition of "fusion machine" to the Atomic Energy Act. The NRC published a proposed rule on February 26, 2026, with comments closing May 27, 2026. No final rule had been located as of October 6. Agreement States such as Tennessee would have to adopt compatible rules once it is final.

Tennessee moved first. TDEC's fusion rules, Chapter 0400-20-14, took effect June 9, 2026; trade and law-firm coverage reports a $50,000 initial filing fee and an annual fee of at least $5,000. On August 31, 2026 the state issued Type One "the state's first ever fusion-specific byproduct material license" for Project Infinity at Bull Run. Type One's Series B release calls it the company's initial operating license for Project Infinity. Neither release publishes a license number or conditions, or says whether it covers Infinity One alone, both machines, or tritium. World Nuclear News reported it as a license for construction of a fusion power plant. Whether Tennessee's rule will need amending to match a final NRC rule is an open question no source addresses.

The Department of Energy's October 2025 fusion roadmap targets commercial fusion on the grid by the mid-2030s and commits no dollar amounts. DOE's fiscal 2027 budget justification shows $805.7 million enacted for Fusion Energy Sciences in fiscal 2026, of which $100 million funds public-private partnerships including the Milestone program, and requests $135 million for that line in fiscal 2027. It says four Milestone teams have raised more than $386 million of private money against $46 million of initial federal commitments (the $46 million covered all eight awardees), and that later phases depend on appropriations.

Key considerations

Infinity Two assumes D-T operation at a gain of 40; no stellarator has used D-T fuel, and no magnetic confinement device has exceeded a gain of 1. The design rests on company-led simulations, peer-reviewed but not tested in this configuration. No independent assessment of Type One or Infinity Two, favorable or critical, was located. The National Academies' 2021 report on a U.S. fusion pilot plant called a goal of net electricity in 2035 to 2040 "more aggressive, thus higher risk" than the plan in the Academies' 2019 burning plasma report, and did not evaluate specific concepts.

Type One's published magnet results are at 77 K; the 20 K, 32 kA, 8 T test planned in July 2025 for "the coming months" has no published result. Infinity One has no published physical parameters.

Schedules have moved. In February 2024, Infinity One construction was expected to start in 2025; the expected start later moved to 2026. K&L Gates reported in August 2026 that Type One planned to break ground in November, and no start had been announced by October 6. Infinity Two has gone from "as early as the mid-2030s" in 2025 to a 2034 target by May 2026, repeated as "full startup by 2034" in TDEC's August 2026 release.

TVA's documented commitments are an LOI subject to its Board and its least-cost planning, and a parts-fabrication service contract. TVA is run by an interim chief executive, its 2026 resource plan does not include fusion according to available coverage, and no PPA exists. Neither Infinity One nor Infinity Two has a published capital cost.

The public record also conflicts with itself: two output ratings with no engineering explanation, one of them edited into an earlier release; three funding totals that cannot be reconciled; a license described differently by the regulator and the company; and a 77 K test placed in two locations.

Sources