Nuclear Fusion Startup, King Street To Buy 47-Acre Devens Campus, Build Energy Center
A company seeking a scientific breakthrough in green energy production will attempt the feat at a new 47-acre site in the life sciences cluster of Devens, Massachusetts.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems has agreed to buy the plot from MassDevelopment, it announced Wednesday. The company will sell 11 acres of the site, at 111 Hospital Road to King Street Properties, which will construct a manufacturing hub to develop nuclear fusion technology and lease it back to CFS, a spokeswoman said.
"This will be the site where we harness fusion and prove it can work as a clean, limitless power source for the first time in history," CFS CEO Bob Mumgaard said in a statement. A King Street representative didn't respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
The Boston Globe was first to report news of the land deal, which has yet to close.
The 165K SF manufacturing facility would start construction later this year, followed by a 150K SF research facility to be owned by CFS. The company is currently headquartered in a 15K SF Kendall Square office, but it anticipates moving its headquarters to Devens, less than an hour west of Cambridge.
CFS, a private spinoff from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, is working toward commercializing energy harnessed from nuclear fusion, a long-discussed possibility that still uses more energy than it produces. CFS is designing and building a device that uses high-temperature superconducting magnets to try to spur a breakthrough. The company spun out of MIT in 2018 and has since raised over $200M in funding rounds and federal grants.
The plans represent another significant move for King Street in the former U.S. Army base-turned enterprise zone, where the developer is building the first of a five-building, 45-acre biomanufacturing campus nearby. The 4,400-acre Devens zone in Central Massachusetts, managed by MassDevelopment, is also home to facilities for Bristol Myers Squibb and New England Studios, a film and television production facility.
