The facility utilizes krypton fluoride excimer lasers and Stimulated Brillouin Scattering to produce nanosecond-scale laser pulses
At The Fusion Report, we see a number of press releases cross our desks each week. These days in the commercial fusion industry, there are regularly a number each quarter of funding raises (which is nice), but unfortunately there are a lesser number about technical progress towards an actual commercial fusion system. Like yesterday’s note from Pacific Fusion, today’s release from Xcimer Energy marks progress towards that.
Xcimer Energy Progress to Date: Recent Pivot Into Defense
Xcimer Energy’s last major funding round was a $100 million Series A round, which closed just a little less than two years ago. At the time it was funded, Xcimer was the 11th highest funded fusion company in terms of lifetime funding; one year ago, it ranked the same. Today, it is the 18th highest funded fusion company in terms of lifetime funding (slipping by 7 positions), as a number of companies that previously had less lifetime funding than Xcimer closed new funding rounds. Roughly a month ago, Xcimer expanded its leadership team, creating the new position of Vice President of Defense, which is filled by former Navy Captain Doug Kunzman. The role was one of four leadership roles that were created this quarter at Xcimer; the others include two executive roles leading the Vulcan laser program, and one senior marketing role. In addition, the company has 20 open engineering roles, 8 open operations roles, 3 program management roles, 4 science roles and 1 HR talent role.
In general, this is generally positive news given the number of job openings. The pivot to defense work for a high-energy laser company is not necessarily surprising; a number of fusion companies have made pivots into medical isotopes, nuclear materials research, or other areas to slow their “burn rates”. Like other fusion companies, the question that Xcimer faces is whether or not the pivot to new areas presages a future up-round, or a dilutive down-round. With that background, Xcimer’s press release is contained below:
Xcimer Press Release
DENVER, CO, June 3, 2026: Xcimer Energy today announced the start of operations for Phoenix, the largest privately owned laser system in the world and the company’s prototype for commercializing laser fusion.
Phoenix, housed in Xcimer’s 74,000-square-foot Denver laser facility, is a proof of concept for an unconventional fusion architecture: a krypton fluoride (KrF) excimer laser using Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) to compress a microsecond-long pulse into the nanosecond timescales fusion requires. Phoenix successfully demonstrates integrated operation of excimer amplification and SBS pulse compression.
Designing, building and operating Phoenix required Xcimer to rebuild industrial capabilities around large-scale electron-beam-pumped excimer lasers, a competence that was in danger of disappearing after the Cold War.
Backed by venture investors and funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, Xcimer spent four years assembling one of the world’s deepest concentrations of fusion and laser expertise, recruiting engineers, physicists, pulsed-power specialists, and technicians from national laboratories, the National Ignition Facility (NIF), commercial aerospace, the U.S. Navy, and past government excimer laser efforts. (The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, which built and operated the only two remaining large-scale KrF excimer laser systems in the United States, preserved critical technical knowledge that helped bridge the gap between earlier government programs and today’s renewed commercial efforts.)
“We had to rebuild an industrial capability the United States largely abandoned after the Cold War, restoring specialized supply chains, recruiting many of the last engineers with direct experience in these systems, and transferring that knowledge to a new generation,” said Conner Galloway, co-founder and CEO of Xcimer. “Phoenix represents both a technical milestone and the reindustrialization of high-energy excimer lasers in America.”
The physics and the economics
Laser fusion is the only fusion approach to achieve scientific breakeven in a laboratory. In 2022, the NIF demonstrated net energy gain from fusion, and in 2025 produced 8.6 megajoules of fusion energy from 2 megajoules of laser input.
But NIF was built as a scientific research facility, not a commercial power plant. Its solid-state glass laser architecture is too expensive, complex, and maintenance-intensive for economical grid-scale electricity generation.
Xcimer believes commercial fusion requires a fundamentally different industrial system. Its krypton fluoride excimer lasers are designed for higher efficiency, fewer beamlines, lower thermal stress, and compatibility with industrial-scale manufacturing. The architecture uses two beamlines rather than NIF’s 192 and is designed to reduce operational complexity and maintenance requirements.
“NIF proved laser fusion physics works,” said Xcimer co-founder and President Alexander Valys. “Our thesis is that commercial laser fusion becomes possible only if the laser system itself becomes dramatically simpler, cheaper, and more manufacturable.”
What comes next
Phoenix is the first step in Xcimer’s roadmap toward commercial fusion energy.
- Anvil (2028): Commercial-scale excimer amplifier delivering 200 kilojoules on target in a complete two-sided beamline.
- Vulcan (early 2030s): 4 to 12 megajoule laser system targeting wall-plug breakeven and supporting high-energy-density and national-security applications. Xcimer expects to select a Vulcan site this year.
- Athena (mid-2030s): Commercial-scale laser fusion power plant designed for continuous grid-scale electricity generation.
Conclusion: Is This Enough Good News to Support Fundraising?
As a sales and marketing executive with experience at a number of venture capital (VC) funded companies and having easily over two dozen successful funding rounds, I can say that fundraising oftentimes has little to do with a company’s fundamentals. More often than not, it is as much about the overall economic situation, and what other funding opportunities a company is competing against. Today, the US economic situation is mixed; the generally positive environment continues to be somewhat negatively affected by the Iran war. More to the point, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) funding now is absorbing approximately 80% of all VC deals in Q1 2026, creating significant pressure on non-AI/ML deals.
Given these situations, whether now is a good time to raise funds or not is definitely a reasonable question. Additionally, if AI gets even hotter, or if (surprisingly enough) AI investments crash, the VC markets could become significantly depressed. More specifically, it remains to be seen whether or not Xcimer Energy has enough positives between its current progress and its pivot into defense to enable it to get an up-round in its next funding raise. As they say, time will tell…
