North America·Magneto-Inertial Confinement
Zap Energy — Technical Profile & Analysis
Deep-dive assessment of the Sheared-Flow Z-Pinch architecture, fuel path, and market positioning.
Confinement & Reactor
Magneto-Inertial Confinement (Sheared-Flow Z-Pinch)
Fuel Strategy
Deuterium-Tritium
Engineering Moat
Core Plasma & Coil Engineering
Commercial / Funding Profile
Private — Stage Undisclosed
Technology Assessment & Commercial Milestones
Drives current directly through a linear plasma filament — the current's own azimuthal field provides confinement, eliminating external coils. Sheared-flow stabilisation tames the kink instability that historically killed the Z-pinch concept.
Thesis: Radically lower capex by deleting expensive magnets; iterate fast on a desktop-scale plasma; bridge to revenue via SMR fission while fusion matures.
Key engineering bottlenecks: Electrode wall heat flux at high repetition; Pinch lifetime vs. plasma compression depth.
Recent milestones: Late 2025 — FuZE-3: 830 MPa electron / 1.6 GPa total pressure; 2026 — New CEO; announced parallel fission SMR program.
Device pipeline: FuZE-3 → Century commercial pilot.
Timeline: Net gain late 2020s; commercial pivot incl. fission micro-reactors.
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