OpenStar Technologies
🇳🇿 Wellington, NZ · Founded 2021 · Active
OpenStar Technologies is a fusion company in Wellington, New Zealand, founded in 2021 by a researcher from Victoria University of Wellington's Robinson Research Institute, which specialises in superconductors. It is reviving the levitated dipole, a concept in which a ring-shaped superconducting magnet floats inside the vacuum chamber and the plasma forms around it, as it does around the Earth's magnetic field; the US government stopped funding work on the concept in 2011. OpenStar's first machine, Marsden, has a chamber about 5 metres across and a magnet about 1 metre across, and produced its first plasma in November 2024. The company also plans to sell neutrons for isotope production. In February 2026 the New Zealand government lent it NZ$35 million for a new research facility.
- Sector
- Fusion
- Technology
- Levitated dipole
- Fuel
- Deuterium–tritium
- Role
- Fusion developer
Terms
- Levitated dipole
- Confinement around a single magnetically levitated superconducting ring, modelled on how planetary magnetospheres hold plasma. No levitated-dipole device has run at reactor-relevant scale; the main open problem is engineering a superconducting ring that can be levitated, cooled and shielded from neutrons without any physical support.
- Deuterium–tritium
- Lowest ignition threshold; 80% of energy in 14.1 MeV neutrons. The reference fuel for every near-term net-gain claim.
People
- Ratu MatairaFounder, Chief Executive Officer · founder
- Thomas BerryCo-founder, ChIef Product Officer · founder
- Darren GarnierChief Science Officer
- Rod BadcockChief Technology Officer
- Nicole FergusonVP - Finance
- Ben Taylor-BryantVP - Investor Relations
- Patrick CoulsonVP - Tahi
- Gabriel BiolettiDirector - People
Sources
- OpenStar Technologiesoperator
- OpenStaraggregator