Frankie Berry

This week TAE Technologies signed a strategic helium-3 supply and commercialization agreement with Black Moon Energy, a lunar-development company planning a robotic delineation mission to de-risk commercial-scale helium-3 production as TAE prepares to site its 50 MWe Da Vinci power plant. China’s Institute of Plasma Physics completed testing of the largest fusion magnet ever built, a 582-ton toroidal field coil destined for its BEST tokamak. UKAEA’s MAST Upgrade completed its most ambitious experimental campaign yet, producing more than 1,100 plasmas and achieving record plasma pressure while suppressing the edge instabilities that threaten commercial fusion machines. Oak Ridge National Laboratory licensed four cryogenic pellet fueling inventions to stellarator developer Type One Energy. And UC Santa Barbara teamed with Lawrence Livermore to accelerate plasma simulations with AI. Plus The Fusion Report examines the AI-driven DRAM shortage and what Andy Burnham becoming UK Prime Minister means for the UK’s $3.3B fusion program.

This week the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics won €6 million to develop 2-megawatt gyrotrons for Wendelstein 7-X, the U.S. Department of Energy selected 278 Genesis Mission projects including commercial fusion, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Rutherford Energy Ventures launched FULCRA to build shared fusion testbed infrastructure, and the Fusion Industry Association reported a record $4.48 billion raised across 56 companies in a single year. In The Fusion Report’s coverage, Commonwealth Fusion Systems raised another $1 billion to reach $4 billion in total capital and hired former Moderna CFO Lorence Kim; Thea Energy won a $20 million ARPA-E SCALEUP award for the first domestic modular HTS magnet line as national labs turned quantum supercomputing on the FLiBe salt behind tritium breeding; Barclays backed the UK Infinity Fusion Consortium as Inertia published a ten-goal Phase 1 commercialization roadmap; and Pacific Fusion and Lawrence Livermore pushed the Sirius impedance-matched Marx generator past 3,000 shots.

This week Pacific Fusion and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory reported that the Sirius pulsed power prototype has surpassed 3,000 shots, validating the impedance-matched Marx generator architecture that Pacific Fusion has already scaled into a system delivering the highest peak power ever from a single-step pulsed power driver. Inertia Enterprises opened its new Livermore headquarters, a 50,000 square foot facility housing the world’s first fusion fuel target factory. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Cleveland Clinic, and IBM completed the first known quantum computations of fusion fuel materials, modeling nine configurations of the tritium breeding salt FLiBe. And General Fusion became the first publicly listed fusion company as GFUZ began trading on the Nasdaq with roughly $150 million in cash. Plus The Fusion Report’s mid-year 2026 funding status and Realta Fusion selects Madison, Wisconsin for its new headquarters and The Realta Forge R&D facility backed by up to $55 million in state and city incentives.

Proxima Fusion raised 411 million euros ($468 million) led by XTX Ventures and East X Ventures with Google and RWE as strategic investors, a 2.4 billion euro valuation that makes it Europe’s best funded fusion company. Spring Valley and General Fusion shareholders approved the merger that lists General Fusion on Nasdaq as GFUZ, the first publicly traded pure play fusion company. UKAEA and Eni launched RH3OVA, a joint venture selling consultancy and operational services to the global fusion industry. And China completed final tests on the world’s largest superconducting fusion magnet, a 582 ton coil built entirely with domestic supply chains. Plus Helical Fusion signs a construction MoU for Helix KANATA, and Cosylab CEO Mark Plesko on why control systems are the missing backbone of commercial fusion.

The Fusion Industry Association’s fourth annual supply chain report found fusion supply chain spending rose 24 percent in 2025 to $538 million, launched at the industry’s first supply chain trade show in Santa Fe. General Fusion signed a framework agreement with Italy’s Renexia to site and build commercial Magnetized Target Fusion plants. nT-Tao’s Q2 update logged more than 1,000 experiments and launched a fusion power barge project with ABS and Siemens Energy. LLNL found that circularly polarized lasers could save optics at NIF. The Fusion Report also covers CFS becoming the first international partner in the UKAEA’s £220 million LIBRTI tritium program and Realta’s first-ever direct conversion of plasma energy into electricity by a private fusion company. Plus the tracker at 24 companies and $11.4B in disclosed funding.

Helion Energy secured the licenses needed to operate a fusion power plant, clearing the way for its Orion plant in Malaga, Washington. General Atomics will collaborate with the DOE to design the first full-scale fusion blanket test facility. General Fusion’s roughly $1 billion merger with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. III cleared SEC review, with a shareholder vote set for July 6. Type One Energy added former bp CEO Bernard Looney to its board, and Inertia formed a Science and Technology Advisory Board. The Fusion Report also looks at China EAST’s run at 2027 ignition, asks whether data centers belong in space, and refreshes its Top Fusion Companies by Funding tracker at $11.4 billion across 24 companies.

The Department of Energy released its finalized Fusion Science and Technology Roadmap on June 9, built with input from more than 800 scientists and engineers, targeting commercial fusion by the mid-2030s. The same day, Tennessee became the first state in the nation to regulate fusion machines, clearing a path for Type One Energy’s Infinity Two plant near Oak Ridge. On June 10, DOE approved Xcimer Energy’s 724-page Athena preconceptual power plant design. The Fusion Report also goes deep on Realta Fusion’s Hammir-DT tandem mirror power plant design and Thea Energy’s collaboration with NVIDIA, Synopsys, Argonne, and PPPL to build a digital twin of its Helios stellarator.

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 $240 million in...

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.