Editor-in-Chief, The Fusion Report
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.
Inertia Enterprises, co-founded by laser fusion veteran Mike Dunne, is taking a deliberate approach to commercializing the only fusion method that has achieved energy gain. With $450 million in funding, the company is pairing mass-manufactured targets with efficient diode-based lasers and leaning on proven power conversion technology rather than unproven alternatives. It’s a bet that disciplined engineering will get laser ICF to market faster.
Oil at $101 a barrel and swinging $10 a day. The fourth installment of The Fusion Report’s US-Iran series examines what a ceasefire would actually do to prices, why the answer depends on what each side walks away with, and how long any peace is likely to hold.
Solid state transformers offer compelling technical advantages over their conventional counterparts, but a price gap of 5-10x keeps them firmly in niche territory. The Fusion Report examines whether the hype around SSTs matches the current market reality.
Three major conferences this week highlight the common thread connecting AI compute, electric vehicle infrastructure, and fusion energy policy. From NVIDIA’s Rubin chip efficiency gains to DC fast charger market growth and the FIA’s international policy discussions, the common denominator is energy, and how we source, distribute, and consume it.
The NRDC surprised the energy world by filing in support of restarting Iowa’s Duane Arnold nuclear plant, which is set to supply carbon-free power for data center operations in the state. The Fusion Report examines what drove this reversal, how rising fossil fuel pollution and surging AI power demand are reshaping the clean energy calculus, and what the tradeoffs mean for the broader electricity landscape.
Free newsletter
News and analysis every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.