Asia & Oceania · New Zealand · Founded 2021
Monday, June 15, 2026
Openstar Technologies
Magnetic confinement — levitated dipole
Magnetic
Deuterium-Deuterium / p-¹¹B
Undisclosed
TBD
Investor brief
A levitated dipole inspired by Jupiter's magnetosphere
Executive Summary
Openstar Technologies is New Zealand's only fusion company. It pursues a levitated-dipole reactor — a superconducting ring suspended in vacuum — inspired by Jupiter's magnetosphere. The 'Junior' demonstrator achieved first plasma in 2024.
Strategic Thesis
A dipole field is the cleanest confinement nature has ever demonstrated (Jupiter's radiation belts). Engineer it on Earth and advanced fuels become accessible.
Technical & Economic Profile
Architecture class
Magneto-Inertial, Pulsed & Alternative Cores
Pulsed compression schemes that explicitly avoid massive static superconducting magnets, prioritising upfront-capex reductions and modular replicability.
Reactor design
Magnetic / Levitated Dipole
Core tech focus
Levitated superconducting rings
Key milestones
'Junior' first plasma (2024).
How Openstar Technologies sits vs peers
Levitated superconducting dipole that exploits Jupiter-like magnetic topology for native turbulence suppression — one of the few D-D / p-¹¹B-capable architectures with demonstrated first plasma.
Class engineering bottlenecks
- Pulsed-rep-rate engineering: sustaining 1–10 Hz operation with millisecond-scale energy recovery.
- For aneutronic FRC (TAE), bremsstrahlung scales as Pbrems ∝ Tₑ^½, capping Pfus/Pbrems at ~0.2–0.3 without non-thermal ion distributions.
- For MTF (General Fusion), liquid-metal vortex stability under pneumatic shock and synchronisation of dozens of pistons.
- For sheared-flow Z-pinch (Zap), maintaining kink-stability at commercial pulse repetition rates.
LCOE drivers
- Elimination of large superconducting magnet assemblies removes the single largest capex line in tokamaks.
- Direct-conversion architectures bypass the 35–40% Rankine/Brayton thermodynamic ceiling, pushing net plant efficiency past 60–70%.
- Liquid-metal first-walls (General Fusion) eliminate first-wall replacement cycles entirely.
Sourced from the 2026 Global Fusion Energy Comparison — triple-product thresholds, direct-energy-conversion architecture, materials limits, and the LCOE / Qecon framework.
Founding Team
Based in Wellington, New Zealand, Openstar Technologies is taking a radically unique approach by reviving the levitated dipole reactor design—a concept inspired by the highly stable magnetic fields surrounding planets like Jupiter. Founded by HTS magnet innovator Ratu Mataira and structural designer Al Simpson, the team secured a massive technical pillar in Dr. Darren Garnier, an elite MIT alumnus who co-managed the world's premier levitated dipole experiment (LDX). By floating a massive, high-field superconducting magnet directly inside a vacuum chamber, this team is moving through rapid hardware iterations to achieve remarkably stable, turbulence-free plasma confinement.
Ratu Mataira
PhD candidate in Superconducting Engineering, Victoria University of Wellington
Al Simpson
Advanced structural engineering designer
Darren Garnier
PhD in Plasma Physics, MIT; former Columbia University researcher
The Problem
Global electricity demand is entering an unprecedented growth phase driven by AI infrastructure, data centers, transport electrification, industrial decarbonization, water desalination, and advanced manufacturing. Solar suffers intermittency, wind capacity-factor variability, natural gas carbon emissions, conventional nuclear cost and deployment speed, and batteries energy-density and duration limits. The world requires a new source of clean, dispatchable baseload energy. Fusion represents the ultimate energy source — the challenge is making it commercially practical.
Levitated Dipole Reactor
A free-floating superconducting ring produces a dipole magnetic field whose natural equilibrium is remarkably stable — exactly the configuration that confines Jupiter's radiation belts.
Junior Demonstrator
First-plasma device validating dipole confinement (2024).
Levitating HTS Ring
Superconducting ring suspended magnetically inside the vacuum vessel.
Advanced Fuel Compatibility
Dipole equilibria naturally favour high-energy non-Maxwellian populations, opening the door to advanced fuels.
Fuel Strategy
D-D, then p-¹¹B
Begin with D-D to validate the architecture; transition toward aneutronic operation in larger machines.
Product Platform
Junior
Levitated dipole demonstrator with first plasma in 2024.
Energy Conversion
Hybrid Direct + Thermal
Mixed
35% (thermal) → 50%+ (direct)
Levitated-dipole confinement of D-D and p-¹¹B fuels; planning hybrid energy recovery (thermal for neutrons, direct for charged products as the fuel cycle evolves).
Conversion chain
- 1Levitated dipole magnetic confinement
- 2Phase 1: D-D → mostly thermal recovery
- 3Phase 2: p-¹¹B → direct alpha collection
- 4Plant evolves from thermal to direct over its lifetime
The levitated-dipole topology is uniquely suited to advanced fuels because of its excellent particle confinement and natural magnetic geometry.
Economic Vision
Inherent stability removes a huge swath of plasma-control complexity; advanced-fuel compatibility opens up an aneutronic commercial pathway.
Vision
Bring Jupiter's confinement physics down to Earth.
Mission
Build the world's first commercial levitated dipole fusion reactor.
Engineering Bottlenecks
- Levitation reliability of HTS ring
- Heat exhaust from a closed-flux geometry
Milestone Timeline
2024
First plasma in 'Junior' demonstrator
The description above reflects Openstar Technologies's publicly stated technology goals, roadmap and architecture. Many elements — particularly net-energy gain at scale, advanced fuel cycles, and grid-relevant economics — remain ambitious objectives that have not yet been demonstrated commercially anywhere in the fusion industry. Forward-looking statements should be treated as engineering targets, not certainties.
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Citations & Sources
Academic & financial rigor- [01]
The Global Fusion Industry in 2025
Fusion Industry Association · Jul 2025
- [02]
Company disclosures and press releases
Openstar Technologies
- [03]
Peer-reviewed plasma physics literature
Journal of Plasma Physics / Nuclear Fusion