Editor-in-Chief, The Fusion Report
In the finale of The Fusion Report’s Decathlon series, we hand out the medals. Sort of. Events 8 (funding) and 9 (regulation) are essentially complete. Events 1 and 2 (plasma performance and drivers) sit at the halfway mark, with KSTAR, EAST, JET, Polaris, and SPARC closing in. Events 3 through 6 are barely underway. No clear winner yet.
Japan’s Helical Fusion closed its Series B at JPY 2.7 billion ($17M US), bringing total funding to roughly JPY 9.8 billion ($61.4M US). The company also launched the Helix Program Official Partners with three founding industrial collaborators: NICHIAS, Hasetora Spinning, and Seno Kisen. Manufacturing for the Helix HARUKA demonstration magnets is now underway.
Part 4 of The Fusion Report’s Decathlon series covers three more magnetic confinement approaches. Z-pinch machines run massive currents through plasma. Field-reversed configurations form self-stabilizing plasma rings. Magnetic mirrors trap plasma in open-ended bottles. Meet the companies betting on each: Zap Energy, Helion, TAE Technologies, Realta Fusion and more.
The UK’s Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) program has awarded Tokamak Energy a £70M ($95M) contract to build high-temperature superconductor (HTS) magnets for its prototype fusion power plant. The deal puts Tokamak Energy alongside Commonwealth Fusion Systems as a premier magnetics vendor, and signals the UK’s commitment to a sovereign fusion supply chain.
The third installment of The Fusion Decathlon series turns to magnetic fusion energy (MFE) solutions. The article traces the 75-year arc of tokamak development from the Soviet T-1 to ITER and Commonwealth Fusion Systems’ SPARC, then examines stellarators from Germany’s record-setting W7-X to commercial ventures by Type One Energy, Proxima Fusion, Thea Energy, and Renaissance Fusion.
Inertia Enterprises announced one of the largest private sector-led collaborations in the history of the U.S. national lab system, signing two Strategic Partnership Projects and a CRADA alongside a licensing agreement covering nearly 200 LLNL patents. Separately, the DOE’s Jefferson National Accelerator Facility received its second round of funding for a spin-polarized fusion fuel project that could increase the likelihood of fusion reactions by 50%.
The 2026 ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit came to San Diego with a packed agenda and a complicated message for the fusion industry. Fission is getting the political tailwind, China is outspending the US on fusion by a wide margin, and AI is accelerating energy demand in ways the grid isn’t yet equipped to meet. Our full dispatch from the summit floor.
Part two of The Fusion Decathlon examines why different fusion approaches face different commercial challenges. This installment breaks down the specific engineering hurdles confronting inertial fusion energy: driver efficiency, target manufacturing, repetition rate, and the precision required to make several shots per second work for decades.
As global governments pour billions into fusion commercialization, US legislation and a new DOE Office of Fusion aim to keep America competitive. We break down what’s in the pipeline.
A fusion power plant isn’t one hard problem. It’s ten. The Fusion Decathlon introduces a new framework for evaluating the field: ten events every fusion company must master before putting electricity on the grid. The scoreboard is already running.
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