Record private and public funding. Power purchase agreements crossing the billion-dollar mark, machine assemblies underway. May 7, The Fusion Report convenes the companies, supply-chain leaders, and analysts laying out what fusion’s run at the mid-2030s requires.
The Fusion Industry Association tallied $2.64 billion in new private and public investment over the twelve months ending July 2025, lifting cumulative funding past $9.7 billion across 53 companies. The pace has only picked up since: the F4E Fusion Observatory put cumulative private investment at €13 billion (~$15.2 billion) by September 2025, and Q1 2026 brought a $450 million Series A for Inertia, one of the companies on stage May 7. Individual power purchase agreements have crossed the billion-dollar mark, while machine assemblies are underway in the US, the UK, and Japan.
The question shifting onto every fusion roadmap is no longer “will this work” but “what does the next decade actually require?” Some companies are talking about commercial plants by the mid-2030s. Not all of them will hit the front edge of that window. Some are pursuing architectures that take longer to commercialize. Commercializing fusion at scale will take diverse architectures and an industrial supply chain.
That is the conversation behind Fusion 2035: The Shot Clock to Put Electricity on the Grid, a half-day webcast The Fusion Report is hosting on Wednesday, May 7 at 10:00 AM Pacific. Mike Heumann, Chief Analyst at Ignition Research, returns to moderate, and the speaker lineup is built to cover the full picture.
Who Is on the Bill
Each speaker brings 20 minutes on stage, followed by the live panel.
Inertia. Mike Dunne, CTO and Co-Founder.
Inertia is commercializing inertial fusion based on the physics proven at the National Ignition Facility, with a pilot plant planned at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory anchored by Thunderwall, a thousand-laser system designed to deliver greater power and roughly twenty times the efficiency of NIF.
TAE Technologies. Jim McNiel, Chief Growth Officer.
TAE is the world’s leading effort on hydrogen-boron fusion, an aneutronic fuel cycle that produces carbon-free, non-radioactive baseload electricity, and is in the process of merging with Trump Media & Technology Group in an all-stock transaction valued at more than $6 billion
Thea Energy. Brian Berzin, Co-Founder and CEO; David Gates, Co-Founder and CTO.
Thea is building stellarators around a planar-coil architecture meant to simplify manufacturing and bring construction costs in line with utility economics, anchored by its Helios power plant design and a steady cadence of magnet and integration milestones.
Type One Energy. Charlie Baynes-Reid, CFO and General Counsel.
Type One Energy is developing stellarator-based fusion power plants and has been one of the category’s more disciplined operators, particularly on the financing and infrastructure side of how first-of-a-kind plants will get built and underwritten.
Realta Fusion. Derek Sutherland, Vice President of R&D.
Realta Fusion, based in Wisconsin, is developing high-field, compact, magnetic-mirror fusion power plants, with a hardware-heavy roadmap focused on practical engineering and near-term commercial pathways.
Peak Nano. Shaun Walsh, CMO, and Mason Wolak, VP of Capacitor Development.
Peak Nano produces nanolayered polymer capacitor films and pulsed-power capacitors that deliver higher energy density and reliability than conventional alternatives, putting the company on the critical path for several next-generation fusion architectures alongside defense and grid applications.
E&P Technologies. Caroline Sorrick, Founder and CEO.
E&P Technologies is rebuilding how high-voltage energy storage and pulsed-power systems are designed and manufactured, breaking long-standing industrial constraints to support next-generation fusion architectures and other frontier energy applications.
Live Panel and Q&A
The half-day closes with a 45-minute live panel moderated by Mike Heumann. The conversation centers on the realities behind the mid-2030s timeline: which technical milestones are actually within reach over the next 24 months, where the supply chain has to catch up, what financing structures need to evolve, and how the global picture (the US, EU, UK, and Asia-Pacific programs all racing toward similar dates) shapes the path to first-of-a-kind deployment.
What You Will Walk Away With
The promise of the May 7 program is honest accounting. Not a promotional reel. Not a pure science update. A grounded, milestone-by-milestone read on where the next nine years hold, where they slip, and what each part of the industry must accomplish on the way.
If your work touches grid planning, clean-energy investment, industrial policy, or fusion supply, this is the session where the next twelve months get pressure-tested.
Register
Fusion 2035: The Shot Clock to Put Electricity on the Grid · Wednesday, May 7, 2026 · 10:00 AM Pacific
Free to attend. On-demand replay available afterward.
Hosted by The Fusion Report
