Thea Energy Collaborates with MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center on Planar Coil Magnet Program

KEARNY, N.J., Nov. 04, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Thea Energy, Inc., a fusion power company advancing the stellarator for the commercialization of an abundant source of baseload energy, today announced a collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to test a full-field, full-force planar encircling coil at the institution’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC).

Thea Energy and MIT’s PSFC will collaborate on the testing and validation of an encircling magnet for the Company’s large-scale integrated stellarator, “Eos.” Prior generations of stellarator magnet coils were three-dimensionally complex and expensive to manufacture due to their extreme precision requirements. Thea Energy’s proprietary system architecture utilizes flatter, simpler magnets that reduce costs, construction complexity and maintenance cycles, and increase uptime. The collaboration with MIT will leverage PSFC’s state-of-the-art cryogenic test facilities and its expertise in high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets. This work aims to accelerate the de-risking of key milestones on Thea Energy’s path to deliver commercial fusion by 2035.

“Expanding our collaboration with MIT adds world-class expertise to a team that already brings together national laboratories and industry leaders in building for scale,” said Brian Berzin, co-founder and chief executive officer of Thea Energy. “This collaboration follows strong progress demonstrated by our recently published power plant design, and exemplifies how Thea Energy is leveraging decades of magnetic confinement fusion research.”

Zachary Hartwig, Ph.D., Robert N. Noyce career development professor and head of the PSFC Engineering Group, added, “Thea Energy is advancing a promising approach for fusion power plants, and PSFC’s testing infrastructure is ideally suited to evaluate Thea Energy’s encircling coils. Practical stellarator coil technology has profound implications within fusion energy and across broader applications. This collaboration aligns directly with our mission at MIT to advance scalable and efficient fusion technology, and our team looks forward to pooling our technical capabilities.”

As part of the collaboration, Thea Energy and MIT’s PSFC will:

• Test and validate an encircling coil at full magnetic field and full force.
• Analyze the coil's efficiency under power-plant-relevant conditions in order to develop predictive models like those used in Thea Energy’s “digital twin” collaboration with NVIDIA and others.
• Test magnet resilience to guarantee reliability and support high power plant availability.
  
  

Eos utilizes 12 encircling coils and approximately 300 programmable shaping magnets to fine-tune the plasma. These modular shaping coils can be easily replaced and adjusted in strength to account for real-world assembly variability and wear and tear. Thea Energy has already built and validated these magnets for Eos at scale. The Company’s follow-on fusion power plant, “Helios,” leverages the same planar coil architecture, including both the encircling coils and the shaping coils.

About Thea Energy, Inc.

Thea Energy, Inc. is commercializing scalable and economical fusion energy systems via its planar coil stellarator architecture. Thea Energy’s stellarator power plants will uniquely provide an abundant and safe source of zero-emission energy for the future of humanity. The Company has utilized arrays of mass-manufacturable magnets and dynamic software controls to reinvent the stellarator.

Thea Energy spun out of Princeton University and Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory in 2022 to commercialize the stellarator, a mature magnetic confinement fusion architecture. The Company was selected as an inaugural awardee of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program following a detailed merit review process, and is also supported via nine Department of Energy INFUSE awards and an ARPA-E SCALEUP award. Thea Energy is currently collaborating with leading national labs, academic institutions, and industrial partners to commercialize fusion energy on the fastest and most efficient path.

To learn more about Thea Energy’s mission, visit thea.energy and follow us on LinkedIn and X. 

Media Contact
Madeline Joanis
maddy@thea.energy