Cambridge Heavy Industries has been quietly building a desktop fusion device

Fusion power usually conjures images of massive industrial facilities laced with large lasers or magnets, but a startup in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been quietly building a device that can fit on a tabletop.

The optics of the device were on display behind Yun Kai, co-founder and CEO of Cambridge Heavy Industries, while he chatted with me on a video call. The company has been operating in stealth out of a small lab near MIT, and Kai gave TechCrunch an exclusive look at the technology it has been developing.

“We purposely built a small modular reactor. It’s tiny, it’s benchtop,” he told me. “Because it’s small, it makes everything easier.”

The small size has allowed Cambridge Heavy to experiment and iterate quickly. “The small module nature can enable 50 to 80 experiments, 50 to 80 shots per day,” he said. Data from those experiments will feed simulations that use AI...

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