Google DeepMind—Google’s artificial intelligence development subsidiary—recently announced a new partnership with fusion start-up Commonwealth Fusion Systems. The goal of this collaboration is to leverage AI to both advance plasma simulation and discover novel control strategies, ultimately accelerating CFS’s timeline to deliver commercial fusion to the grid. Google has a vested interest in CFS’s timeline to commercial deployment. Aside from participating in CFS’s 2021 funding round that raised $1.8 billion, Google also entered into a 200 MW power purchase agreement with the company in June. If all goes according to plan, that power will come from CFS’s first 400-MWe ARC commercial fusion power plant in Chesterfield County, Va. CFS has previously projected that ARC will enter operation in the early 2030s. DeepMind’s work will interface with SPARC, the demonstration predecessor to ARC in Devens, Mass. As for SPARC’s timeline to achieving net-positive fusion energy, CFS has previously projected late 2026 to early 2027. Last year, DeepMind released TORAX, an open-source plasma simulator. The company plans to use this software to produce a “fast, accurate, differentiable simulation of a fusion plasma” as well as “discover novel real-time control strategies” for SPARC, which could potentially be applied to other fusion machines. According to Google, TORAX will be used to run millions of virtual experiments before SPARC is even turned on, giving CFS the opportunity to test and adapt their plans. This work has already become a “linchpin in CFS’s daily workflows,” according to DeepMind.

Full report : Commonwealth Fusion Systems Partners with Google DeepMind to Apply AI in Advancing Plasma Simulation.

For more see the OODA Company Profile on Commonwealth Fusion Systems.