Tracking the economics and commercial trajectory of fusion energy. Last updated May 2026.
| Name▲ | Approach▲ | Funding type▲ | Cumul. funding (USD)▼ | Stated target▲ | Most recent milestone | Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ITER ↗ | Tokamak | Public | $22B † | — | ITER Council approved revised baseline: first plasma 2034, full magnetic energy 2036, deuterium-tritium operations 20392024-11 | Cadarache, France |
| Commonwealth Fusion Systems ↗ | Tokamak | Private | $3B † | 2032 † | Closed $863M Series B2 (Nvidia, Google, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Mitsui); SPARC assembly underway in Devens, MA; ARC pilot plant sited in Chesterfield County, VA2025-08 | Devens, MA, USA |
| TAE Technologies ↗ | FRC | Private | $1.3B † | — | Closed $150M round (Chevron, Google, NEA); cumulative funding about $1.3B2025-06 | Foothill Ranch, CA, USA |
| Helion Energy ↗ | FRC | Private | $1B † | 2028 † | Broke ground on Orion 50 MW commercial plant at Malaga, WA; targeting Microsoft PPA delivery in 20282025-07 | Everett, WA, USA |
| Pacific Fusion ↗ | Magneto-inertial | Private | $900M † | — | Exited stealth with $900M Series A (largest in fusion history; tranched on milestones); led by General Catalyst2024-10 | Fremont, CA, USA |
| General Fusion ↗ | Magneto-inertial | Private | $440M † | — | Secured $22M bridge financing from Segra Capital and PenderFund following May 2025 layoffs of about 25% of staff2025-08 | Vancouver, Canada |
| Tokamak Energy ↗ | Tokamak | Private | $335M † | — | Named partner on a University of Houston-led DOE FIRE superconducting tapes project and technical advisor on eight other FIRE projects; follows $125M private round (Nov 2024) and $52M DOE/DESNZ ST40 upgrade partnership (Dec 2024)2025-10 | Oxford, UK |
| Zap Energy ↗ | Z-pinch | Private | $330M † | — | Closed $130M Series D; unveiled Century test platform2024-10 | Everett, WA, USA |
| Marvel Fusion ↗ | ICF | Private | $170M † | — | Extended Series B to €113M total (EQT, Siemens Energy Ventures, EIC Fund); building $150M laser facility at Colorado State University2025-03 | Munich, Germany |
| Type One Energy ↗ | Stellarator | Private | $160M † | — | Raised an additional $87M (convertible note) bringing cumulative funding above $160M, ahead of an expected $250M Series B at a reported $900M pre-money valuation; September 2025 TVA letter of intent covers potential deployment of a 350 MW Infinity Two stellarator at the retired Bull Run coal plant2026-01 | Madison, WI, USA |
| Focused Energy ↗ | ICF | Private | $82M † | — | Completed DOE Milestone Program participation; partners with University of Rochester and plans a Bay Area laser facility2025-01 | Austin, TX, USA / Darmstadt, Germany |
| First Light Fusion ↗ | Other | Private | $70M † | — | Abandoned fusion power plant strategy; pivoted to inertial fusion amplifier technology. IP Group wrote down its First Light stake by 60%+ (£236M to £100M)2025-03 | Oxford, UK |
| Realta Fusion ↗ | Other | Private | $55M † | — | Closed $36M Series A for mirror fusion concept; separate $9.5M Silicon Valley Bank growth facility2025-05 | Madison, WI, USA |
| NIF / LLNL ↗ | ICF | Public | — | — | Achieved record 8.6 MJ fusion yield on April 7, 2025 from 2.08 MJ to capsule (target gain 4.13); NIF's primary mission is US stockpile stewardship2025-04 | Livermore, CA, USA |
| JT-60SA ↗ | Tokamak | Public | — | — | Verified by Guinness World Records on September 4, 2024 as the largest tokamak by plasma volume (160 m³); achieved first plasma October 23, 20232024-09 | Naka, Japan |
| EAST ↗ | Tokamak | Public | — | — | Sustained steady-state high-confinement plasma at over 100 million degrees Celsius for 1,066 seconds, breaking its own 2023 record of 403 seconds2025-01 | Hefei, China |
| KSTAR ↗ | Tokamak | Public | — | — | KFE announced 48-second plasma campaign at 100 million degrees Celsius (Dec 2023 to Feb 2024); 2026 target is 300 seconds2024-03 | Daejeon, South Korea |
| STEP ↗ | Tokamak | Public | — | 2040 † | UK Spending Review 2025 (announced June 11, 2025) included £2.5B multi-year fusion package covering STEP, R&D infrastructure, and the LIBRTI fuel facility; site at West Burton A selected October 2022; construction scheduled to start around 20302025-06 | West Burton, Nottinghamshire, UK |
| EUROfusion / DTT ↗ | Tokamak | Public | — | — | Divertor Tokamak Test (DTT) construction advancing at ENEA Frascati; first plasma targeted for 20312023-06 | Frascati, Italy (DTT); distributed (EUROfusion) |
† Company-disclosed figure. Not independently verified. Stated commercial targets are company-disclosed targets, not predictions.
Annual flows are estimated from year-over-year changes in FIA-tracked cumulative totals. The FIA reporting cycle runs mid-year to mid-year, not calendar year, so the labels are approximate. 2024 and 2025 bars include both private rounds and FIA-tracked public grants; earlier years are predominantly private capital. The 2021 spike reflects CFS's $1.8B Series B and Helion's $500M Series E.
Source: Fusion Industry Association, annual Global Fusion Industry reports (2021 to 2025) · As of 2025
US figures are enacted DOE Fusion Energy Sciences appropriations, including ITER contributions. FY2024 was $790M; FY2025 was $790M; FY2026 is $806M. The EU EUROfusion figure is a USD-equivalent multi-year average of the €549.4M EURATOM 2021 to 2025 framework. UK UKAEA values are baseline annual grants and do not allocate the multi-year £410M (2024) and £2.5B (2025) packages across fiscal years. EU and UK series are not extended to FY2025 or FY2026 because verified annual figures are not currently available.
Source: DOE Congressional Budget Justifications and CRS R48866 (Nov 2025); EU EUROfusion; UKAEA annual reports · As of FY2026
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission is developing a framework to regulate commercial fusion machines under 10 CFR Part 30 (byproduct material) rather than 10 CFR Part 50 (utilization facility). The Commission approved the Part 30 rulemaking approach in SRM-SECY-23-0001 on April 13, 2023. The ADVANCE Act of 2024, signed July 9, 2024, added the statutory definition of "fusion machine." The NRC published its proposed rule, "Regulatory Framework for Fusion Machines," in the Federal Register on February 26, 2026 (91 FR 9476); the public comment period closes May 27, 2026. The NRC has targeted a final rule by October 2026, ahead of the December 31, 2027 deadline set by the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act.
The Part 30 versus Part 50 distinction has direct cost implications for first-of-a-kind fusion plants. Part 50, the route historically used for fission reactors, involves multi-year proceedings, full safety case documentation, and a construction permit followed by an operating license. Part 30 governs facilities that handle radioactive byproduct material (in fusion, primarily tritium) and still requires NRC authorization, but the licensing process is shorter and lighter. Commercial developers have cited the Part 30 approach as a reduction in regulatory risk, though licensing cost and timing will depend on the terms of the final rule.
The UK Atomic Energy Authority's Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) programme is a government-funded effort to design and build a prototype fusion power plant in the UK, with first power targeted around 2040 and construction scheduled to start around 2030. On October 3, 2022 the UK government and UKAEA selected West Burton A in Nottinghamshire, a former coal-fired power station site, as the location for the STEP plant. UK Industrial Fusion Solutions Ltd. was set up in early 2024 to deliver STEP. The UK government announced a £410M fusion investment package in 2024 and a further £2.5B multi-year package in 2025 covering STEP, broader fusion research, and supply-chain development. UKAEA has said it expects private capital to fund subsequent commercial plants.
ITER is a multilateral tokamak under construction in Cadarache, France, funded by the EU, US, Japan, China, South Korea, Russia, and India. The ITER Council approved a revised project baseline in November 2024: first plasma in 2034, full magnetic energy operation in 2036, and deuterium-tritium operations in 2039. The 2024 baseline added about €5B to the prior baseline. The ITER Organization figure for total project cost is about $22B (in-kind and cash contributions combined); the US Department of Energy has separately estimated total cost at about $65B by 2049, an estimate ITER disputes. ITER is a research facility, not a power plant. It will not generate electricity for the grid, and its design target is Q ≥ 10 in burning plasma scenarios (fusion power output ten times the plasma heating power input). Private fusion developers cite ITER's delays and cost growth as evidence that the public-sector route is slow; critics of private fusion cite them as evidence of the difficulty of the underlying engineering.
More articles on power generation coming soon.
What counts as a fusion company:The programs and companies tracker uses the Fusion Industry Association's inclusion criteria as a guide: private companies whose primary commercial focus is fusion power, including those pursuing magnetic confinement, inertial confinement, and magneto-inertial approaches. Government-funded facilities (ITER, NIF, EAST, KSTAR, JT-60SA, STEP, and EUROfusion's DTT) are listed separately and are not counted in the FIA private capital figure.
At-a-glance figures:Fusion industry funding ($9.7B) and active private company count (53) are from the Fusion Industry Association's 2025 Global Fusion Industry report. The $9.7B figure is cumulative through mid-2025 and includes both private rounds and FIA-tracked public grants; it does not cleanly separate private from public capital. The Q ≈ 4.1 figure is the target energy gain from NIF's April 2025 record shot (8.6 MJ fusion yield from 2.08 MJ delivered to the target capsule); it does not account for total wall-plug laser energy input. The December 5, 2022 NIF ignition shot (3.15 MJ from 2.05 MJ to capsule, target gain about 1.5) is documented in Abu-Shawareb et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 132, 065102 (2024). The 2028 commercial target is Helion Energy's company-disclosed target from its May 2023 Microsoft power purchase agreement announcement; Helion has not yet demonstrated net electricity.
News feed: The developments feed is hand-curated, not auto-aggregated. Items are selected for factual significance: funding rounds, device milestones, policy actions. Each item links to the source organization or primary publication.
Economic indicator charts: Annual industry-funding flows are approximate estimates derived from year-over-year changes in FIA cumulative totals; they are not independently audited transaction data. The FIA reporting cycle runs mid-year to mid-year (about July to July), not calendar year; bars are labeled by the cycle ending that summer. Government funding figures are drawn from DOE Congressional Budget Justifications, the Congressional Research Service report R48866 (November 2025), and UKAEA annual reports. The EU EUROfusion bar is a USD-equivalent multi-year average of the €549.4M EURATOM 2021 to 2025 framework. EU and UK figures are not extended to FY2025 or FY2026 because verified annual figures for those years are not currently available.
Company funding figures:All private company funding figures marked with † are company-disclosed totals from press releases, investor announcements, or the FIA annual survey. They have not been independently verified. Helion's figure reflects cash equity raised (about $1B) and excludes the up-to-$1.7B contingent capital from the November 2021 Series E. Pacific Fusion's $900M Series A is tranched against technical milestones; not all of that amount is necessarily drawn. Public program budget figures are from official government or organizational sources where available; where not, they are noted as not disclosed. ITER's $22B is the ITER Organization baseline; the US Department of Energy has separately estimated total cost at about $65B by 2049.
Last updated: May 2026.
This page is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, a recommendation, or a solicitation to buy or sell any security. Stated commercialization dates are company-disclosed targets, not predictions or endorsements.