(Yicai) April 10 -- Chinese nuclear fusion startup NovaFusionX has completed an Angel+ funding round worth CNY700 million (USD102.5 million), bringing its total fundraising to CNY1.2 billion (USD175.6 million) within just one year and setting a record among private fusion companies in China.

The latest round drew continued backing from a leading Chinese internet company as an early investor, while new participants included Meituan Dragonball, the industrial investment fund under Meituan, and private equity firm Hillhouse Capital, the Shanghai-based company announced today.

Founded in April last year, NovaFusionX focuses on developing miniaturized and distributed controllable nuclear fusion technology. Its founder, Guo Houyang, previously worked at the Institute of Plasma Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Washington in the United States, where he has long conducted research in nuclear fusion.

In August last year, NovaFusionX raised CNY500 million in an angel round to build its proof-of-concept device, Nova One. The device has now entered the engineering construction phase and is expected to achieve its first plasma discharge by the end of this year, the company said today.

The firm aims to become China’s first private company to reach a fusion temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius next year. It also plans to build China’s first small-scale distributed fusion demonstration power plant in the first half of the 2030s, targeting commercial electricity supply at the 50 to 100 megawatt level.

Global nuclear fusion technology has entered a critical window for commercialization, according to NovaFusionX. Helion Energy, a leading US fusion company, is constructing its first fusion power plant, Orion, and has signed an agreement with Microsoft to supply 50 megawatts of electricity to the latter’s artificial intelligence data center by 2028.

NovaFusionX said nuclear fusion is poised to become the ultimate energy source for the AI era. The participation of internet companies as investors not only provides strong financial support but also lays the foundation for deploying fusion energy in AI data centers, cloud computing bases, and smart industrial parks in the future.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Emmi Laine