Miles to Meters and $Billions to $Millions - TAU Systems to build a new generation of compact particle accelerators following $15M seed investment

Democratization of access will accelerate technological advancement, from bio-molecular drug and crop research to nuclear waste reduction

• TAU's revolutionary laser-driven plasma accelerators will speed up breakthroughs and industrial applications in a smaller, more affordable, and more sustainable footprint
• Room-sized accelerators to become available to buy or access through service center model for applications in biotech, energy, agriculture, and nuclear waste reduction
• Serial tech investor, Lukasz Gadowski, leads initial financing round to commercialize the technology

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 26, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Up to now high-energy particle accelerators have been the exclusive domain of countries and governmental organizations. Due to their enormous size and very high cost, access for engineers and biotech professionals is severely limited. TAU Systems is poised to bring particle accelerators to a multitude of users by harnessing the latest laser technology to make electrons surf on three-dimensional plasma waves and accelerate them to ultra-high energies.

The laser-driven particle accelerators and X-ray Free-Electron Lasers (XFEL) developed by TAU Systems will give unprecedented access to a world of ultra-small objects evolving ultra-fast under ultra-powerful conditions – TAU's team calls it the Ultraverse and speaks in terms of angstroms, attoseconds and petawatts.

TAU Systems' business model is two-pronged: the company will offer beamtime, data acquisition and analysis as a full-service supplier as well as complete laser-driven accelerators and XFEL systems for sale, to, e.g., pharma and bio tech, battery and solar technology, and other material-science driven markets. The company is currently building academic and industrial partnerships to develop the ultimate laser technology and leverage the most recent scientific and technological advances. It aims to offer its first products for sale in 2024, have an XFEL service center operational by 2026, and start selling full XFEL systems by 2027.

TAU Systems was founded in 2021 by Bjorn Manuel Hegelich, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin and a prominent expert in laser plasma interaction who has also led laser-acceleration physics research at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The company is rapidly growing its team including experts from the Stanford Linear Accelerator, the Laboratory for Laser Energetics at the University of Rochester, and Los Alamos National Laboratory. Along with a seed investment of $15M, the founding investor, Lukasz Gadowski, is bringing his experience and expertise in spearheading frontier technologies, being an early investor in advanced air mobility, including Volocopter and Autoflight in Europe and Archer Aviation in the USA. He has a remarkable track record in founding and growing companies, such as Delivery Hero, a company worth ~$10 Bn today and listed on the German stock exchange.

Bjorn Manuel Hegelich vividly remembers the experiment which convinced him to start TAU Systems. With his team at the University of Texas at Austin, he was implementing a novel technique for laser-driven particle acceleration, hoping to increase the energy of the accelerated electrons by 50% over the state-of-the-art at the time. The experiment demonstrated a 500% improvement, ten times more than expected. This remarkable result made the laser-driven particle accelerator technology reach at once the level of performance of the largest accelerator facilities in the world, but within the confines of a single university building. Since achieving this seminal result, the TAU Systems team is fully energized and focused on delivering this revolutionary technology.

"Until now, the world's most powerful accelerators have simply been too large and too expensive to be a realistic tool for the vast majority of scientific and corporate users. We believe that access to our machines will have transformative impacts across almost every industry and the economy." said Bjorn Manuel Hegelich, CEO of TAU Systems. "By exploring, developing, and benefiting from the Ultraverse, TAU Systems will greatly accelerate the future solutions to our biggest global challenges – human and planet health."

For more information on TAU Systems' solutions and services, visit www.tausystems.com.

TAU Systems is an Austin, Texas-based deep-tech company developing the first compact particle accelerators and specialized X-ray free-electron lasers that combine the capabilities of large accelerators with a small footprint to provide easy and affordable beam-time access for industry users. Led by premier experts in laser-driven particle accelerators, TAU is democratizing access for the progress of biotechnology, nuclear and more. Learn more at www.tausystems.com. 

Media Contact:
Jerome Paye 
TAU Systems 
[email protected] 

SOURCE TAU Systems