Interview with Antonio Vergara, CEO of VERSE Europe: “CDTI Innovation support and FEDER funds are essential to develop our nuclear fusion safety technology”
In the global race towards fusion energy, VERSE Europe is advancing the development of SAFU, an advanced safety system designed to become a benchmark for future nuclear fusion plants. Backed by CDTI Innovation support and co-financed by European FEDER funds, the project reinforces the company’s commitment to developing proprietary technology with an international outlook and potential applications across other strategic sectors.
VERSE Europe is a young company with a strong international vocation and a highly specialised positioning within the field of large scientific infrastructures. Founded in Switzerland in 2021 and based in Spain since 2022, the company was initially created to act as a bridge between Asian — especially Korean — engineering and technology firms and major international scientific projects. However, its rapid evolution has led it to take a step further: moving from technology consultancy to the development of its own engineering and R&D solutions for particle accelerators and nuclear fusion reactors.
“We started by supporting Asian technology companies in entering international markets for large scientific infrastructures, but as the company grew we began working directly with laboratories and research centres around the world, developing our own solutions,” explains Antonio Vergara, CEO and co-founder of VERSE Europe, alongside Liliya Rybak, both holding 50% of the company’s shares.
The company currently employs 24 professionals — 12 of them dedicated specifically to R&D activities — and has a strong export orientation: 80% of its revenues come from international markets such as France, South Korea, Japan, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Its main clients include leading organisations such as ITER International Organisation, Fusion for Energy, Quantum Science and Technology, Mobiis Co., Ltd, Leonardo and ATG Europe. “Spain represents around 20% of our sales, but our natural market is clearly global,” Vergara notes.
VERSE Europe is in a phase of both geographical and technological expansion. “Our goal is to continue growing to a team of around 100 engineers, consolidate our presence in Asia and develop proprietary products not only for large scientific facilities, but also for other sectors such as space, defence or even fintech,” says the CEO. Around 30% of the company’s revenues are reinvested in research and development, a strategic commitment that is beginning to materialise in projects such as SAFU.
The project Advanced safety systems for nuclear fusion plants (SAFU) marks a turning point for VERSE. It is the company’s first major R&D project aimed at developing a proprietary technology with commercial potential. “Until now, we had mainly worked in engineering services and technology consultancy. SAFU is the first time we have taken the leap into developing our own product that could become an industry standard,” Vergara stresses.
The need addressed by SAFU is clear. Currently, safety and protection systems for nuclear fusion plants and particle accelerators are designed specifically for each installation. “Each project develops its own system, which leads to very ad hoc and poorly reusable solutions. SAFU aims to create a standard that can be applied to future commercial fusion plants,” explains the CEO of VERSE.
From a technological perspective, the project is based on fast data acquisition and control systems using FPGA technology, maximising the use of open hardware and open software solutions. “We want to develop highly reliable safety systems that are also flexible, scalable and adaptable to different reactor configurations,” Vergara details. This approach not only facilitates standardisation but also opens the door to applications in other scientific and industrial fields.
The human team is one of the pillars of the project. SAFU relies on a multidisciplinary group made up of experts in superconducting equipment protection and nuclear fusion reactors, electronic engineers, hardware and software specialists, as well as professionals with extensive experience in developing prototypes for critical safety systems. “Our most senior engineers have focused on defining the overall project strategy and gathering existing knowledge from similar initiatives worldwide, while more junior profiles are heavily involved in the design and manufacture of the first prototypes,” Vergara explains.
The project is also being developed in collaboration with the Korean company Mobiis, a technology partner with whom VERSE has maintained a strong working relationship for years. “Mobiis has more than two decades of experience developing electronic systems for particle accelerators and tokamaks. Even though we are thousands of kilometres apart, our teams are used to working together,” says the CEO. In SAFU, VERSE is responsible for overall coordination, design and prototype development, while Mobiis handles mathematical models and simulations for reliability calculations, as well as providing access to its laboratories in Seoul, which offer greater technical capabilities.
Although SAFU is the company’s first formal R&D project, VERSE already has significant prior experience. “Our senior engineers have worked for years in scientific facilities such as CERN’s LHC or the ITER project, and all that experience is proving crucial in defining the project strategy,” Vergara points out. This accumulated knowledge allows the company to anticipate technical and regulatory challenges in a sector with particularly demanding safety requirements.
One of the major challenges of the project is planning the return on investment, given that fusion energy is not expected to be commercially available for another 10 to 15 years. However, Vergara remains optimistic. “Although it will take several decades before fusion electricity reaches our homes, there are already many experimental and pre-commercial projects underway worldwide. We expect SAFU solutions to be adopted by the industry even before 2030, and possibly as early as 2027 in experimental projects.”
Moreover, the potential applications extend beyond nuclear fusion. “We believe that many of the solutions we are developing can be easily transferred to other scientific and industrial fields where safety and reliability are critical,” he adds.
Support from CDTI Innovation and European FEDER funds has been decisive in making this project possible. “This support has been essential for a young company like ours to embark for the first time on the development of a proprietary technology with commercial potential,” Vergara states. In his view, this type of funding enables the undertaking of high-risk technological projects that would be difficult to finance through traditional channels.
Vergara also highlights the internal impact of this support. “Most of the funding has been used to hire engineers and researchers, allowing us to consolidate an in-house R&D team. For young companies like VERSE, having liquidity dedicated exclusively to research and development is key so that growth is not measured solely in revenue or number of clients, but also in technological capabilities and generated knowledge,” he emphasises.
From a broader perspective, the CEO believes that initiatives like this have a direct impact on the Spanish innovation ecosystem. “Co-financed European funding encourages small companies and startups to develop ideas with enormous technological and social potential. In the long term, this translates into a more competitive industry, more knowledge and solutions that benefit society as a whole.”
Looking ahead to the next five years, VERSE is ambitious about the international impact of SAFU. “We are optimistic and believe that the solutions developed under SAFU can become the industry standard for fusion safety and reactor protection, both for current and future plants,” Vergara concludes — an aspiration aligned with the company’s international, technological and high-impact DNA since its inception.
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