Only one fusion device on Earth has ever met a key scientific milestone, but that isn’t stopping Maritime Fusion CEO Justin Cohen from planning something bold: a fusion reactor on a ship.
It sounds wild, but the timing might be right. Thanks to major advances in AI, computing, and high-temperature superconducting magnets, fusion is edging closer to commercial reality. Many experts now say the question is “when,” not “if.”
And putting a reactor on a ship isn’t new territory for nuclear power. Naval fleets already use nuclear fission reactors to power submarines and aircraft carriers for decades at a time. Fusion aims to deliver the same long-lasting energy, but without meltdown risks or long-term radiation concerns.
Cohen said that Maritime Fusion may be the first company seriously exploring what it would take to install a tokamak on a ship, a common design for fusion reactors.
Why Start at Sea?
Fusion power plants will be costly at first, making it hard to compete with cheap solar and wind on land.
But at sea, the economics shift. Shipping companies are looking for clean alternatives to diesel, with options like ammonia and hydrogen still expensive.
According to Cohen, those fuels are pricey enough that first-generation fusion could actually compete.
The Startup and Its Tech
Maritime Fusion has raised $4.5 million in seed funding led by Trucks VC, with support from Aera VC, Alumni Ventures, Paul Graham, Y Combinator, and others.
The team is already assembling high-temperature superconducting (HTS) cables, using mostly Japanese-made tape. These cables will form the magnets needed to contain the super-hot plasma inside the tokamak. They’ll also be sold to other companies to generate revenue while development continues.
The startup’s first reactor, named Yinsen, is expected to generate around 30 megawatts of electricity. It will be roughly eight meters across and cost about $1.1 billion. Maritime aims to have it operational by 2032.
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Competition in the Fusion Race
Industry leader Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) is further ahead with its SPARC reactor, a smaller device that could prove next year that tokamaks can produce more energy than they consume. But SPARC won’t feed power to the grid. CFS’s full power plant, ARC, is planned for the early 2030s.
Maritime Fusion isn’t worried. Cohen says they won’t spend billions on a non-commercial demonstration device.
“The first tokamak we build will be an energy-producing tokamak for a customer,” he said, aiming to bring fusion power to the seas before anyone else.
