What is an Accelerator?
A startup accelerator is a company that provides support, both financially and as an educational mentorship, to startup companies. Multiple startup companies typically will be involved with the accelerator as they work to accelerate the early stages of their companies.
The learning curve for startups usually takes years, but an accelerator program attempts to teach it all in a few months. Accelerator companies usually take an equity percentage of the startup in exchange for investing money and time into the business.
What Type of Companies are Accelerators For?
Accelerators are for startup companies that are looking to receive both financial and educational mentorship from experts in their fields.
Over the next year and a half, Commonwealth Fusion Systems is building a $300-million, 47-acre headquarters in Devens, in its $1-billion, long-term effort to make fusion – an emission-free technology with no waste products – the default energy source on Earth, using its SPARC fusion machine. CEO Bob Mumgaard spoke with WBJ about the effort thus far.
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What are you building in Devens exactly?
We are creating a new headquarters and building a manufacturing facility, but we are also building the first net energy-producing fusion machine. That is a new thing in human history. No one has ever done that before.
Mind-boggling magnets could unlock plentiful power
By Ben Morris
image captionDr Greg Brittles, Tokamak Energy
Dr Greg Brittles eyes gleam with excitement when he explains the project he is working on. It s every engineer s dream really, to have a project that s technically challenging, which requires you to develop new technology and solutions to hard problems, but that are also simultaneously important for the world to have.
Since finishing his research at Oxford University five years ago, he has been working for Tokamak Energy, a UK start-up that has plans to build a fusion reactor.
Fusion is the reaction that powers the Sun and the stars. If that power could be harnessed on Earth it would provide a plentiful source of energy, from only a tiny amount of fuel and producing no carbon dioxide. What s not to love?
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“We’re in an emergency, and we need a coordinated effort with all hands and all minds on deck trying to solve this problem.” The urgency in that call to confront climate change, issued by MIT faculty member Asegun Henry SM ’06, PhD ’09, reverberated throughout MIT Better World (Sustainability), a recent virtual gathering of the global MIT community.
More than 830 attendees from 57 countries logged on to learn about climate change solutions in development at MIT and to consider how, in the words of Provost Martin A. Schmidt SM ’83, PhD ’88, “Every academic discipline in every corner of our community can contribute to solving this global challenge.” Schmidt, who is the Ray and Maria Stata Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, moderated the main session of the program, which also featured Vice President for Research Maria Zuber and linguistics graduate student Annauk Denise Olin.