In the series “Start-up Check!” We regularly examine the business models of start-ups. What is behind the company? What makes the start-up so special and what is there to criticize? Today: Marvel Fusion.
Start-ups: That sounds like inventiveness, future technologies, new markets. But in reality, many of the start-ups unfortunately often turn out to be a mixture of an e-commerce idea, haphazard founders and shaky future prospects.
They certainly do exist: the thought leaders who work on the big problems and revolutionize business models. Finding and introducing them is the task of the “Start-up Check” format. Today: Marvel Fusion, DeepTech start-up in the field of fusion energy.
What is Marvel Fusion?
- Industry: Clean Energy / DeepTech / Fusion Energy
- Founder: Moritz von der Linden (CEO), Georg Korn (CTO), Karl-Georg Schlesinger, Pasha Shabalin
- Year founded: 2019
- Business model: Development of a commercially viable fusion power plant based on laser-induced inertial fusion
- Goal: CO2-free, safe and affordable base-load electricity generation through nuclear fusion
Research into nuclear fusion has been going on around the world for over 70 years and the first commercial power plant is expected to be completed “in about 30 years”. This joke has been repeated so often that it has become a household word in the energy industry – and remains a promise for the distant future.
But not for Marvel Fusion. The company wants to make the dream of an inexhaustible energy source a reality in the next ten years: it wants to deliver a functioning fusion power plant. A power plant that produces electricity cleanly, safely and almost unlimitedly.
Fusion energy works on the principle of the sun: instead of splitting heavy atomic nuclei, light nuclei are fused together. The result is an enormous energy surplus without CO2, radioactive waste or the risk of a nuclear meltdown.
The problem, however, is that the temperatures and pressures required for this are difficult to technically control. Previous approaches, such as the tokamak reactor, attempt to achieve this with huge magnetic fields. Marvel Fusion takes a different approach.
Is economical fusion energy possible?
Moritz von der Linden, serial entrepreneur and CEO, founded the Munich-based deep tech company in 2019 together with laser physicist Dr. Georg Korn, who previously headed the ELI laser research center in Prague, as well as Karl-Georg Schlesinger and Pasha Shabalin.
Von der Linden was able to contribute entrepreneurial experience: in 2015 he sold the foreign exchange platform 360T to the Deutsche Börse for 750 million euros. Korn brought physics with him.
Together they put forward a thesis that caused a stir in expert circles: high-intensity ultra-short pulse lasers could finally make the ignition of a controlled fusion reaction economically feasible.
Technology: laser instead of magnet
Marvel Fusion’s approach is called laser-induced inertial fusion (Inertial Confinement Fusion, ICF). The principle: Extremely short and intense laser pulses hit nanostructured fuel targets and thereby create the conditions necessary for fusion.
The energy is not held by magnetic confinement, as with the tokamak, but by the inertia of the material itself – for fractions of a second, which is sufficient for fusion.
The crucial difference to the classic ICF approach lies in the fuel: While other systems rely on the hydrogen isotope mixture deuterium-tritium, Marvel Fusion follows a deuterium-boron approach.
This would have a significant advantage: there would be no neutron radiation and no radioactive waste and it would not be necessary to produce the rare and radioactive tritium.
Nobel Prize winner as a consultant at Marvel Fusion
The fact that this is not just a promise is shown by the fact that Marvel Fusion has been able to demonstrate significant fusion reactions with this technology in experiments lasting several years.
The scientific advisor is Gérard Mourou, Nobel Prize winner in physics and one of the fathers of ultrashort pulse laser technology.
The core components of the approach:
- Ultrashort pulse laser: High-intensity laser pulses in the femtosecond range provide the necessary energy density for fusion.
- Nanostructured fuels: Special fuel targets maximize energy absorption and fusion yield.
- Scalability through laser technology: Laser diodes follow a similar cost degression as solar modules – the cost per watt fell from over 40 dollars in 2000 to less than five US dollars in 2018. This makes the economical operation of a fusion power plant increasingly realistic.
Marvel Fusion: Classification and added value
Marvel Fusion’s approach addresses a key bottleneck in the energy transition. Renewable energy such as wind and solar power are intermittent because they cannot provide baseload power 24/7. Fusion energy could close this gap, without CO2 emissions, without fuel shortages and without the safety risks of traditional nuclear power.
Whether this will succeed is of course an open question. The scientific debate surrounding Marvel Fusion’s fuel choice is ongoing. Critics – including researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics – doubt that the deuterium-boron approach can deliver the necessary energy gains. Marvel Fusion argues that its own technology can resolve precisely this conflict of objectives.
In the competitive environment, Marvel Fusion moves between two camps: magnetic confinement (Proxima Fusion, Tokamak Energy) and other laser approaches (Focused Energy from Darmstadt).
The approach from Munich differs from both in the combination of nanostructured fuels and the targeted deuterium-boron fuel cycle. This is a unique selling point that also represents the greatest scientific risk.
Scaling: Market, Capital and Internationalization
According to its own information, Marvel Fusion is the best-funded European fusion start-up. By 2025, the company will have raised around 385 million euros, including 170 million euros from private capital and 215 million euros from public cooperation projects.
The most recently expanded Series B comprises 113 million euros with investors such as EQT Ventures, Siemens Energy Ventures and the European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund. HV Capital, Earlybird, b2venture, Tengelmann, Deutsche Telekom and Bayern Kapital are also among the investors.
This financing structure reflects the profile of a DeepTech company that is designed for long development cycles: venture capital, corporate investors and government innovation support complement each other. This enables perseverance, but also shows that private venture capitalists alone are not enough.
USA instead of home
The move to the USA is symbolic of this dilemma: because European investors declined, the most important research facility is not being built in Germany, but on the campus of Colorado State University in Fort Collins.
The planned laser system – according to the company, the most powerful short-pulse laser system in the world – costs around 150 million US dollars and is co-financed by the US Department of Energy, among others. Completion is scheduled for 2026. CEO von der Linden has publicly criticized the lack of willingness to take risks among European private investors.
For the next step, the construction of a power plant prototype, Marvel Fusion is preferably evaluating locations in Germany. The costs are likely to be in the multi-digit billion range and would probably be co-financed through preliminary contracts with initial customers. According to the company, fusion energy should be able to make a substantial contribution to global energy supply by 2045.
Between scientific pioneering claims and industrial implementation
Marvel Fusion addresses one of the biggest challenges of the energy transition: a reliable and emission-free baseload supply that is not dependent on the limitations of wind and solar energy.
The laser-based approach using nanostructured fuels is scientifically original and differs significantly from the currently dominant magnetic fusion concepts.
With total financing of 385 million euros, well-known investors from industry and venture capital, and an internationally networked research infrastructure, the Munich-based DeepTech company is well positioned.
The demonstration facility in Colorado will show whether the physical principles also work on an industrial scale. The key will be whether Marvel Fusion can resolve the scientific controversies surrounding the deuterium-boron fuel cycle and make the leap from research to industrialization.
If both succeed, the Munich start-up could become one of the most important energy companies in Europe and provide proof that DeepTech bets with a time horizon of ten years are not an illusion.
Also interesting:
