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Inertia held a grand opening ceremony for its Livermore headquarters July 10. (Photo by Jude Strzemp) 
Inertia intends to build the world’s first fusion energy power plant for operation by mid-2030. Seen here is a mockup of the envisioned power plant. (Image courtesy of Inertia) 
The Inertia headquarters is intended as the company’s home base to advance the state of high power lasers and develop the process for mass manufacturing fuel targets. (Photo by Jude Strzemp) 
Inertia chief scientist and co-founder Annie Kritcher shows a miniature prototype of a fuel target. (Photo by Jude Strzemp) 
Inertia CTO and co-founder Mike Dunne shows fragments of silicon that must be shaped into small spheres to cast carbon shells for the fuel targets. (Photo by Jude Strzemp) 
As part of the process to make fuel targets, silicon must be shaped into the form of a pellet. It will serve as the cast for creating a thin layer of carbon used to hold the deuterium and tritium fuel. (Photo by Jude Strzemp) 
Chief scientist and co-founder Annie Kritcher talks about a carbon shell, which is a component of a fuel target. (Photo by Jude Strzemp) 
Inertia plans to develop a process to mass manufacture the fuel targets required for fusion power plants. Seen here is a carbon shell, meant to hold deuterium and tritium fuel. (Photo by Jude Strzemp) 
Inertia CEO and co-founder Jeff Lawson shows a stack of 50 diodes, a laser component. (Photo by Jude Strzemp)
Livermore-based company Inertia officially opened its headquarters last week, marking progress on its mission to commercialize fusion energy.
Aiming to break ground by 2030 on a utility-scale fusion energy power plant, Inertia intends to have a plant operating by mid-2030 to produce clean, abundant and inexpensive energy.
Inertia’s plan builds upon the achievement of fusion ignition, first accomplished in 2022 at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility. In the experiment, controlled nuclear fusion produces more energy than is input by laser.
But ahead of creating a power plant, the fusion energy company must first create the world’s most powerful and efficient laser as well as the first fusion target factory, Inertia CEO and co-founder Jeff Lawson said last Friday during the grand opening of the facility.
The research and process development required to reach Inertia’s goal is slated to occur at the 50,000 square-foot headquarters in partnership with the LLNL.
“We can make every part of humanity’s energy needs cheaper, better, cleaner, because of the power of fusion energy,” Lawson said during a ceremony celebrating the opening of the headquarters.
Established in 2024, Inertia moved into its home base at 7800 Las Positas Road during early 2026. Following a six-month cleanup and renovation of the former wire extruding factory, Inertia leaders were ready to welcome the public to the facility.
Through its work at the HQ, Inertia intends to build a fusion energy power plant that produces 1.5 gigawatts of electricity — enough output to power over one million homes.
The envisioned power plant laser system will be composed of 1,000 smaller lasers, cumulatively one million times more powerful than NIF at just one tenth of the facility’s footprint. A continuous production of power will be possible thanks to the firing at ten targets per second.
“A lot of people think about the future of energy as the electricity that’s coming out of the plug in your home, and the bill you pay, and that is, of course, an important part of the future of energy,” Lawson said on Friday.
But the future of energy is also in data centers and industrial processes such as the production of cement, steel and fertilizer, he said.
“We can take all of those industries, make them cheaper, more cost effective and make them green with fusion energy,” Lawson said.
Laying the groundwork for a fusion energy power plant, Inertia is working with industry partners to scale up the supply chain for required laser diodes.
The company also intends to advance the state of high power lasers at its Livermore facility.
The process will involve building a single unit cell prototype at its headquarters, 50 times more powerful than the current leading laser, according to Lawson.
Single-unit cells will later be constructed in a factory and packed in shipping containers for their modular construction, he said.
On the other side of operations, Inertia plans to advance target-manufacturing capabilities to a factory-level of one million targets daily, up from a one-by-one manufacturing process.
During a tour of the headquarters, Inertia chief scientist and co-founder Annie Kritcher showed a miniature prototype of a fuel target.
It is composed of a lead can, plastic membranes and a capsule made of a carbon shell with deuterium and tritium fuel, Kritcher explained.
Kritcher designed the world’s first working target.
“Thanks to the NIF experiments, we know exactly how rough, how round, how perfect these targets need to be to produce fusion energy,” Kritcher said.
Inertia co-founder and chief technology officer Mike Dunne estimated that in about one year, a process development area will be converted to a production line for the fuel capsule.
The goal is for the targets to cost less than $1 each and have about $75 worth of energy if put on the grid.
During a grand-opening ceremony Friday, Lawson expressed optimism regarding Inertia’s ability to commercialize fusion energy.Â
“Compared to proving the basic science of fusion energy, mass manufacturing of laser diodes, of targets, these are relatively achievable things,” Lawson said.
On it’s mission to commercialize fusion energy, Inertia has access to the codes LLNL uses to simulate and design the fusion experiment at NIF, he explained.
“It’s not going to be easy, but if we’re successful working together it will show again the amazing things that this country can deliver for the world if we all work together,” NIF photon science directorate principal associate director Vincent Tang said at the grand-opening.
