A Seattle-area startup pursuing fusion energy through sheared-flow-stabilized Z-pinch confinement, which compresses plasma using electrical current rather than large superconducting magnets.
Zap Energy was founded in 2017 in Seattle, Washington, by University of Washington professors Uri Shumlak and Brian Nelson, along with entrepreneurial investor Benj Conway. The company is now headquartered in Everett, Washington. It grew out of two decades of Z-pinch research at UW, beginning with the ZaP experiment in 1998 and continuing through the FuZE device built under ARPA-E’s ALPHA program.1
The core concept is the sheared-flow-stabilized Z-pinch: an electrical current running through a plasma column generates a magnetic field that compresses (or “pinches”) the plasma. Historically, Z-pinches were plagued by instabilities that disrupted confinement within microseconds. Shumlak and collaborator Charles Hartman at Lawrence Livermore showed in the early 1990s that flowing the plasma axially—creating a velocity shear—could suppress these instabilities, potentially holding the plasma together long enough for fusion to occur.2
In 2024, Zap’s FuZE and FuZE-Q devices produced over 10,000 plasmas—nearly double the 2023 output—and the company commissioned Century, a device combining repetitive pulsed power, liquid-metal plasma-facing walls, and resilient electrodes. Century completed runs of over 1,000 pulses at 0.1 Hz, a step toward the repetition rates a power plant would need.3
In 2025, the next-generation FuZE-3 device achieved plasma pressures roughly 10,000 times atmospheric pressure—approximately 10 times the pressure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. While the company frames this as a fusion milestone, independent confirmation of associated neutron yields and energy balance has not been published as of mid-2026.4
Zap Energy has raised approximately $330 million in venture capital, plus additional government grants. The most recent round was a $130 million Series D in October 2024, led by Soros Fund Management. Earlier investors include Chevron Technology Ventures, Addition, Lowercarbon Capital, and DCVC.5
As of 2026, Zap has completed a pre-conceptual design for a fusion pilot plant in collaboration with the US Department of Energy. The company’s near-term focus is scaling FuZE-3 to higher currents and demonstrating that its sheared-flow approach can sustain fusion-relevant conditions at repetition rates compatible with power generation. The Z-pinch approach remains higher-risk than more established confinement concepts, but its mechanical simplicity—no magnets, no vacuum vessel, no external heating—could offer dramatic cost advantages if the physics validates at scale.