A San Francisco Bay Area startup, Inertia, has launched to turn the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL) 2022 fusion “ignition” milestone into a working power plant. The lab achieved history when 192 lasers compressed a fuel pellet, releasing more energy than the lasers delivered — the first proof of ignition (Reuters, 2025).
Inertia is co-founded by Andrea Kritcher, the physicist behind the LLNL breakthrough; Mike Dunne, a Stanford expert in power plant design; and Jeff Lawson, the entrepreneur who built Twilio into a $4 billion company before stepping down in 2023 (BusinessWire, 2025).
The startup has licensed nearly 200 patents from the national lab and plans to build vastly more powerful, compact lasers and mass-produce fusion fuel targets. It aims to demonstrate prototypes within 18 months, pre-commercial assembly lines in 3–4 years, and deliver a 1.5 GW power plant in about 12 years — enough to power a medium-sized U.S. city (Fusion Industry Association, 2025).
If successful, Inertia could accelerate the race toward zero-carbon, always-on fusion power, a field where rivals such as Commonwealth Fusion Systems are pursuing magnetic confinement approaches.
