Lausanne-based startup Fusionality has secured CHF 3 million, or approximately $3.7 million, in a pre-seed funding round. The investment was led by Founderful and Playfair. The company develops measurement, simulation, and control systems designed to support fusion energy operations.
The founders, Federico Felici and Jonas Buchli, are former Google DeepMind employees with backgrounds in plasma physics and robotics. They previously collaborated on research regarding deep reinforcement learning for plasma control, which was published in Nature in 2022.
Fusionality aims to address the industry-wide challenge of converting raw plasma data into control signals within milliseconds. Currently, most fusion companies build proprietary control systems from scratch, leading to a lack of reusable infrastructure across the sector.
The startup faces competition from companies like Next Step Fusion and potential market shifts caused by DeepMind’s open-source initiatives, such as the TORAX plasma simulator. DeepMind also maintains a partnership with Commonwealth Fusion Systems.
The company plans to use the new capital to hire control engineers, computational physicists, and software specialists. These resources will also support the effort to acquire the startup's first paying customers within the global fusion industry.
