Private companies and governments are accelerating efforts to develop fusion power, a potential source of clean, safe, and nearly limitless energy, Financial Times reports (open copy). Fusion joins light atoms such as hydrogen isotopes to release energy, in the same way the sun produces power. Unlike current nuclear plants that split atoms, fusion creates no long-lived radioactive waste and carries no risk of meltdown.
Start-ups have raised more than 13 billion dollars since 2020, compared with less than 2 billion dollars in all previous years. Commonwealth Fusion Systems, the best-funded company, has collected about 3 billion dollars from investors including Google, Nvidia, and Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures. It is building a demonstration reactor near Boston and aims to supply electricity from a commercial plant in Virginia in the early 2030s. Helion Energy plans to deliver power to Microsoft from a plant in Washington state as early as 2028. Type One Energy is developing a stellarator - a twisted doughnut-shaped device that uses powerful magnets to hold hot plasma - and seeks to connect a plant to the grid in Tennessee by the early to mid-2030s.
Policy support widens across major economies
Governments are also increasing their involvement. The United Kingdom published a strategy in March that includes 2.5 billion pounds of public investment by 2030. The European Union has announced hundreds of millions of euros for fusion projects. In the United States, the Department of Energy released a roadmap targeting commercial fusion power by the mid-2030s, while ARPA-E pledged 135 million dollars in new funding. China has invested at least 6.5 billion dollars since late 2022, prompting concern and renewed US efforts.
Recent technical gains have helped fuel this momentum. Improved superconducting magnets create stronger fields to contain plasma at extreme temperatures. Supercomputing allows better modelling of plasma behaviour. These advances make large-scale prototypes possible for the first time.
Fusion remains unproven at commercial scale, and many challenges lie ahead. Yet the combination of private capital, policy backing, and material progress has made the technology harder to dismiss. If successful, fusion could provide firm, zero-carbon power and strengthen global energy security.