Tri Alpha Energy Inc.’s headquarters is as unassuming as any other in Foothill Ranch.
It’s a plain, white two-story building with a decorative glass tile rotunda. Big rectangular windows cover the sides.
The U-shaped parking lot is dotted with sedans, sport utility vehicles and a few luxury cars.
Inside is a mystery.
The building is home to Tri Alpha Energy Inc., a super secretive nuclear fusion company.
There’s no sign indicating the company is based in the building. A “no soliciting” notice, tinted reflective windows and locked doors with sensors greet visitors.
The company doesn’t have a website. Employees coming and going won’t admit they work there.
Little is known about Tri Alpha. We do know it raised $50 million in venture capital funding in the second quarter, the most in the county for any clean technology company—or company of any type—according to figures compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers International Ltd. and the National Venture Capital Association.
Tri Alpha is part of the county’s budding clean tech sector, which broadly includes providers of alternative energy, pollution control, recycling, green vehicles, energy-efficient lighting and other products and services.
In all, Tri Alpha has raised some $100 million since it started in 1998. Its executives haven’t publicized anything, although Chief Executive Dale Prouty vaguely hinted at a future announcement when a Business Journal reporter showed up at his doorstep.
“We’re going to stay in stealth mode until we have something to disclose,” said Prouty, who stepped out of the building for a few minutes to entertain questions, not necessarily answer them.
The company has made progress and done “some good things,” Prouty said, but didn’t elaborate beyond that.
UCI Tie
Based on scant reports and patent information, Tri Alpha is a University of California, Irvine, spinoff with technology based on research by physicist Norman Rostoker, a UC Irvine professor.
Rostoker didn’t respond to phone calls or e-mails.
His research is steeped in the complex science of nuclear fusion, in which the center of two atoms are fused together to make a larger one. In the process they release heat energy.
Tri Alpha’s goal is to mix hydrogen and boron in a high-temperature plasma to produce helium. The reaction releases energy, which could be used to generate electricity and eliminate waste from nuclear power plants.
But fusion developments are viewed skeptically in many circles.
The problem, according to one physicist with knowledge of the company’s technology, is that Tri Alpha’s process has yet to yield a lot of energy.
“The key has been to get enough back to what you put in,” said the physicist, who asked not to be named.
Tri Alpha has indicated the company could achieve enough energy for commercial use by 2015 or 2020.
Backers
That’s a long time frame for investors. But that hasn’t scared them off.
Backers include billionaire Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital in Seattle, Palo Alto-based Venrock Associates or Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in New York.
Vulcan and Venrock don’t list Tri Alpha among their portfolio companies and didn’t respond to calls or e-mails for comment.
Tri Alpha even is a mystery to Charlie Becker, the administrative director of UCI’s Don Beall Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, which connects school researchers with companies and venture capitalists.
Goran Matijasevic, the executive director of UCI’s Chief Executive Roundtable, which connects business leaders to the university, is one of a few with direct knowledge of Tri Alpha.
But he’s not talking either.
“I think that the company prefers to have minimal publicity at this time,” Matijasevic wrote in e-mail.
The physicist who spoke to the Business Journal called Tri Alpha the county’s “secret startup.”
He was half-joking, but half right.
