26th Technology of Fusion Energy Meeting (TOFE 2024)
Kieran Furlong
CEO
Realta Fusion
Kieran is the CEO of Realta Fusion, an early-stage company developing fusion energy for applications in industrial process heat and power. He has extensive experience in start-ups and venture capital, particularly in the areas of energy, cleantech/climatetech, ag & food and industrial biotech. Kieran spent the first decade of his career with ICI and Johnson Matthey in the chemical industry in a range of technical and commercial roles across the globe – in Argentina, Germany, the UK and the USA. Following that, he moved into start-ups and worked on advanced fuels, bioplastics, waste-to-energy technologies, including the development of the first 100% bio-based Coca-Cola™ bottle.
In 2017, Kieran returned to his native country and launched the $24M Ireland Agtech Fund – a partnership between Finistere Ventures and the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund. In addition to his role with Realta Fusion, he is also a Senior Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Kieran served on the board of a number of start-ups and has mentored innovators from academia as they commercialized technology emerging from their research. He has a degree in Chemical Engineering from University College Dublin, Ireland and an MBA from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar.
About Realta Fusion
Realta Fusion is an early-stage fusion energy company which spun out of a large ARPA-e funded project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The company raised a successful seed financing round in May 2023 led by Khosla Ventures and is an awardee of the Department of Energy’s Milestone Fusion Program. Realta is developing compact magnetic mirror fusion generators as the lowest capex and least complex path to commercially competitive fusion energy. Realta is targeting the need to decarbonize industrial process heat as the fastest path to full-scale deployment of this technology. The company is based in Madison, WI.