Sometimes founders search high and low for the right startup idea, while other times it comes to them. Federico Felici and Jonas Buchli are two of the lucky ones.
Over and over again, they heard the same thing from fusion companies: “We would ideally buy many of the components to make our our control system, but there isn’t really anybody providing them — and especially there isn’t anybody who speaks the language of fusion,” Felici told TechCrunch.
For years, the two founders have worked to develop new ways to control experimental fusion devices. “We spent quite a lot of our time solving exactly the problems that our customers need to solve,” he said. “It felt like the right time.”
To capitalize on the opportunity, Felici and Buchli founded Lausanne-based Fusionality this year and quickly raised a $3.7 million (CHF 3 million) pre-seed round from Founderful and Playfair. Felici serves as the company’s CEO, Buchli its CTO.
Fusionality is part of an emerging supply chain that has popped up to serve the burgeoning fusion power industry. Some startups, like Kyoto Fusioneering, are developing components that will help fusion startups turn their engineering breakthroughs into electricity for the grid, while others are existing manufacturers with the skills required to turn out high-precision parts.
