Avalanche’s desktop fusion reactor delivers blistering-hot plasma

No one has made a fusion reactor capable of generating power, but physicists have a pretty good road map for how to get there. One major milestone is heating fusion fuel up above 10 million degrees Celsius — nearly as hot as the center of the Sun.

Avalanche exclusively told TechCrunch that its desktop-scale fusion prototype has exceeded the milestone, heating a plasma to roughly 11 million degrees C. Only a handful of companies have accomplished the feat.

Most fusion startups burned through more cash to get there, too. Avalanche said it had spent less than $50 million of venture investment to hit the mark.

Plasma physicists don’t measure the temperature using a thermometer, but instead study the energy of the particles inside the plasma using a metric known as the kiloelectron volt, or kEV.

The fusion world is always on the lookout for experiments that exceed 1 keV. “That’s...

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