A new fusion company has revealed their plans and concept. Pacific Fusion has raised 900 MUSD in their first funding round. Their concept is based on a pulsed magnetic path to inertial fusion. See the links below for more information.
We build on established science. In 2022, breakthroughs in inertial fusion definitively showed the conditions required for ignition and high gain. The National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) used lasers to achieve ignition and the highest laboratory fusion performance (Pτ) ever, and the Z Machine at Sandia National Laboratories used fast-rising current pulses to drive the MagLIF concept to achieve the highest pulsed magnetic fusion Pτ ever, second only to laser-driven concepts. This was the culmination of over a half century of US government support and hard-fought progress by fusion researchers.
I have never been a fan of pellet type fusion reactors, I believe that they have lot of potential issues and bottlenecks that need to be fixed outside of the fusion process itself. Still 900 million in financing is an insane amount and I am really curious to see how this will evolve.