HYLENR is developing low-energy nuclear reactors to produce industrial heat
HYLENR Technologies develops low-energy nuclear reaction systems aimed at producing industrial heat and has raised about Rs 26 crore to move from laboratory demonstrations to building products.
In 1989, two chemists at the University of Utah announced they had produced nuclear fusion in a jar at room temperature. The claim collapsed within months when other laboratories could not reproduce it, and cold fusion became a byword for a result that did not survive scrutiny. Two United States Department of Energy reviews, in 1989 and 2004, found no convincing evidence that nuclear reactions were taking place.
However, the field did not disappear entirely. A small research community has continued to publish on what is now usually called low-energy nuclear reactions, or LENR, and a handful of funding agencies have supported exploratory work. What has not happened in nearly four decades is a demonstration of useful energy that other laboratories could repeat.
Technologies is working in that field. The company is based in Hyderabad, with its research facility at T-Hub and a development centre in Bengaluru. Company records date it to 2024, though the team describes around a decade of prior development behind the technology.
What the company says it has done
In July 2024, HYLENR gave a public demonstration in Hyderabad at which it said its reactor produced a consistent heat amplified by 1.5 times, around 150 watts of heat from a 100-watt electrical input. The company describes the process as applying milligrams of hydrogen and a small electrical current to a palladium-coated nickel mesh, and says the excess heat comes from hydrogen nuclei fusing to form helium.
It has since said it has reached a thermal gain of 1.8, and its technology pages describe further results: helium detected in residual gas analysis, and elements including uranium, yttrium and platinum appearing on palladium surfaces through what it calls transmutation. The company presents these as measurements from working systems.
None of this has been published in a peer-reviewed journal or reproduced by an independent laboratory. The claims are the company's own, made in press demonstrations and on its website, and they sit against a scientific consensus that no such effect has been established.
HYLENR holds an Indian patent covering its low-energy nuclear reactor technology, and has cited the grant as validating the inventiveness of its work. A patent tests whether an invention is novel and non-obvious, not whether it functions as described, so it is still not evidence that the physics works.
Rs 26 crore, and a test in orbit
The company raised about Rs 26 crore, $3 million, in a pre-Series A round announced in August 2025, co-led by Valour Capital and Chhattisgarh Investments, with angel investors also taking part. It has said it is targeting a $25 million round next, aimed at clean energy funds in the United States and Europe.
Its stated markets are industrial heat and power: manufacturing, oil and gas, district heating, desalination, defence installations and data centres, with a described product range running from 200-watt heaters to plants of 10 megawatts.
In March 2025, it signed a memorandum of understanding with TakeMe2Space, an Indian space technology company, to develop and test LENR-powered compute modules in orbit. The company has framed that as a way of validating the technology in an operational setting.
Its senior figures carry weight from other fields. Dr Prahlada Ramarao, the chief innovation officer, is a Padma Shri recipient and a former DRDO scientist who worked on the Akash and BrahMos missile programmes, and later served as vice chancellor of the Defence Institute of Advanced Technology. What would settle the question, though, is not a curriculum vitae or a patent, but a result another laboratory can repeat.
(This story has been researched and compiled using publicly available information.)