China EAST Gets Set for Ignition in 2027
June 18, 2026
China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), the record-setting “Artificial Sun” in Hefei, is now scheduled to attempt fusion ignition in 2027, a milestone reached only once before, by Lawrence Livermore’s National Ignition Facility in 2022. If successful, EAST would be the first to achieve ignition in a steady-state magnetic confinement device, though Commonwealth Fusion Systems’ SPARC is racing toward the same goal on the same timeline. The Fusion Report breaks down what ignition actually requires (the Lawson Criteria of temperature, density, and confinement time) and assesses how close each machine really is. EAST leads on pathfinding plasma physics while SPARC targets Q > 1, but neither has yet crossed into a self-heating burning plasma. The bigger question: would a 2027 ignition milestone finally ignite broad investor interest across the fusion sector?
Putting Data Centers Into Space: Is That Really The Best Idea Elon Musk Has For SpaceX?
June 16, 2026
Thea Energy Births a “Digital Twin” For its Planned Helios Fusion Power Plant
June 11, 2026
Helion Energy closed a $465 million Series G led by Thrive Capital at a $15.5 billion post-money valuation, the largest fusion VC round of 2026. The raise brings Helion’s lifetime private funding to $1.5 billion and makes it the second most funded fusion company after Commonwealth Fusion Systems. The capital will expand U.S. manufacturing capacity and support deployment of Orion, the company’s first power plant, now under construction in Malaga, Washington.
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is the largest and most expensive fusion machine ever built, with a projected cost of between $20B and $24B and final-stage completion now pushed out to 2039. Meanwhile, commercial machines like Commonwealth Fusion Systems’ ARC are expected to deliver 400 MW of electricity in the early 2030s at a fraction of ITER’s price. The Fusion Report traces ITER’s four decades of international cooperation and schedule slips, compares its progress against NIF’s ignition milestones and EAST’s long-pulse records, and weighs what ITER can still uniquely deliver. The verdict: ITER’s value may now rest on being an insurance policy, one that only pays off if commercial fusion slips.
Things You Gotta Know Focused Energy Closes Record $240 Million Series A to Build Germany’s First Laser Fusion Power Plant Focused Energy announced on May 27 that it has raised […]
The new Ferrari Luce is a $640K, 1,035-hp, five-seater sedan that isn’t red, isn’t especially pretty, and isn’t even the fastest EV sedan on the market. So why does it matter? Because when Maranello commits to electrification, the rest of the supercar world has to take EV adoption seriously, and that has knock-on effects for every kilowatt-hour of electricity we’ll need to generate in the decade ahead.
The Fusion Report sized up where battery energy storage technology is headed and asked whether the next generation of AI-powered robots will run on fusion. The NRC is moving toward a substantially lighter federal review of fusion, Germany joined the EU’s IPCEI on innovative nuclear technologies for fusion only, Singapore’s A*STAR signed a five-year research pact with CFS, Canada backed a fusion-based copper-67 isotope production project, General Fusion brought on capital markets veteran Thomas Boehlert as it prepares for the public markets, and JT-60SA cleared its upgrade cycle and prepared for restart.
Will Next-Generation Artificial Intelligence Robots be Powered by Fusion Energy?
/ May 21, 2026
Fusion and AI-powered robots have crossed paths in fiction since 1927’s Metropolis, with Iron Man’s Arc Reactor and the Terminator’s atomic batteries pushing the idea into popular culture. The Fusion Report looks at what it would actually take to drop a fusion device inside a robot. Avalanche Energy’s Orbitron, CFS SPARC, and Helion’s 19-meter machine all clear the power output bar. The size bar is a different story. Fusion can power the grid that powers the robots. A Terminator with a fusion machine in its chest is a longer wait.
Where is Battery Energy Storage System Technology Going?
/ May 19, 2026
US grid-scale BESS capacity is now 45 GW, and California alone added 16.9 GW since 2018. Lithium-ion still leads, riding the EV cost curve, but sodium-ion, vanadium redox flow, and iron-air batteries each have a distinct play in stationary storage. Each technology fits a different point on the duration, safety, and cost curves.
Thea Energy operated its first full-scale stellarator shaping coil, and The Fusion Report dug into whether $50/MWh is really the bar for commercial fusion in the US. Fusion lands on China’s 15th Five-Year Plan as a frontier priority, ITER explains how fusion is pushing AI to evolve, Xcimer Energy keeps stacking senior hires, and Stellarex Energy and TAE Technologies both add new joint work with UKAEA.