In a world seeking renewable sources of energy, the announcement of a potential breakthrough in nuclear fusion from researchers at the US National Ignition Facility in California in late 2022 sparked much excitement.

The tech is still far from ready to turn into viable power plants, but after a century of mostly futile scientific exploration, the California experiments released more energy than was pumped in and paved the way to the current nuclear fusion goldrush.

To wit: The Israel Energy Ministry has pledged $11.5 million to establish a national nuclear fusion institute. The initiative includes major Israeli universities – the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Weizmann Institute of Science, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the Technion and Tel Aviv University – as well as NT-Tao, a local startup developing a compact system for nuclear fusion.

NT-Tao, the first nuclear fusion energy company in the Startup Nation, recently raised $22 million in a Series A round led by Delek US, Next Gear Ventures, Honda, OurCrowd and the Grantham Foundation, which led the company’s $6 million seed round.

“NT-Tao is rapidly headed towards developing a high-density, compact fusion reactor to provide the cleanest form of sustainable energy to mitigate the pending climate crisis,” said Oded Gour-Lavie, CEO of NT-Tao.