Fusion Fortnightly | 2026-07-07
No fluff, all facts.
Proxima raises €411M. Realta claims first direct energy conversion. Shareholders approve General Fusion deSPAC.
Companies
Proxima Fusion raises €411M ($468M) round. They were kind enough to release the news just before the Fusion Fortnightly publication deadline. The company is now valued at €2.4B ($2.7B). This is complemented by matching funds of €400M from the state of Bavaria and is expected to be supported by more from the German federal government. Funds will be used to finish their stellarator model coil as well as build up their internal capabilities in preparation for Alpha, their €2B net-energy stellarator (I predict it will cost more).
Realta claims first direct energy conversion. The system gathered “multiple amps of current at around 100 volts.” This feels to me like Realta did this entirely to beat Helion to be the first, not because it was a critical demonstration; and I kind of like that. Direct energy conversion is not new in mirrors, having been considered for many decades and first demonstrated at least 45 years ago. As I stated last time this came up with Helion: basically every fusion experiment has had some sort of “direct energy” conversion from the input and fusion energy in the plasma to electricity. That’s what most (all?) measurement systems do. The largest demonstrated conversion of energy in a plasma to electricity is likely with the central solenoid in tokamaks when the plasma current is ramped down at JET with a 7 MA plasma, which is about 50 MJ of stored inductive energy at probably about 1 MW.
Shareholders approve General Fusion deSPAC. Votes are tallied here. A yes vote is more of a formality these days, as only low-single-digit percentages don’t make it through this stage. The real test of SPAC shareholder confidence will be seen on redemption, at which $234M is at stake. The redemption numbers will be in the closing 8-K. Anything redeemed will no longer be available for General Fusion to use. The shareholders can vote yes on the merger and still redeem their investment plus initial interest and warrants, effectively shielding them from the downside and keeping the upside. After this vote, the company has to get through some regulatory approvals and then trades as GFUZ (shares) and GFUZW (warrants) on July 10. Call up your broker!
Chinese fusion company Xingneng Xuanguang (Xeonova) raises $73.8M Series A. Sun Xuan, the company’s founder, previously worked at TAE. It’s similar to Helion in that it’s using pulsed FRC compression but also has an external mirror field.
Honghu Fusion tests a full-scale, double-pancake HTS stellarator magnet. Nice curves.
Startorus Fusion tests a 2 × 4 m HTS magnet to 11.1 T peak field.
Astral Systems raises £23M to advance radioisotope production by fusion. Astral is similar to SHINE in building compact fusion neutron sources for non-energy fusion applications.
CFS named first international partner in UKAEA’s LIBRTI programme. LIthium BReeding Tritium Innovation programme (LIBRTI) is a high-flux D-T neutron source to test tritium breeding in different blanket materials. Ironic that a US company announces a collaboration with the UK on an experiment with a name that sounds like liberty nearly 250 years to the day after the signing of the Declaration of Independence of the US from the UK.
UKAEA and Eni launch RH3OVA, a collaboration on the fusion fuel cycle. RH3OVA is a joint venture between the D-T experience on JET at UKAEA and gas-processing codes at Eni that aims to provide tritium system engineering services.
General Fusion and Renexia announce deployment of fusion power in Italy. Renexia is a renewable energy developer, mostly in offshore wind.
General Fusion releases a slick new promo video and an updated website. It is gearing up for that deSPAC.
nT-Tao releases their quarterly update. They’re rolling their own HTS magnets and planning fusion on a barge.
Government
First sector of the BEST vacuum vessel is being prepared for installation.
A full-sized HTS central solenoid coil has been tested for the BEST tokamak.
UKAEA and PPPL sign a memorandum of understanding to collaborate. Seems like they should’ve already been working closely together.
Fusion for Energy releases its 2025 highlights report. Lots of nice pictures and progress on ITER, JT-60SA, and IFMIF-DONES in there.
UKAEA opens a Spinout Accelerator at Culham.
ITER’s first remote handling tool is complete.
People
CFS hires new CFO Lorence H. Kim. Kim was the CFO at Moderna, where he helped raise $4.4B of capital, including during its IPO in 2018. Like fusion energy today, Moderna was a pre-revenue hard-tech company (including through its IPO).
Maura Burns joins Fuse’s advisory board. Maura was the Assistant Director of the CIA’s Weapons and Counterproliferation Mission Center, which fits in well with Fuse’s defense posture.
SRNL has an opening for Division Director, Energy Sciences and Engineering, a new research division that includes fusion energy.
Journal Club
STEP Fusion: Overview of the Concept Design for the Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production and Lessons Learnt published in Journal of Fusion Energy. STEP still aims for a spherical tokamak (it’s baked in the name) by 2040 that can produce at least 100 MWe net and be tritium-fuel self-sufficient. The major updates from SPP-1 to SPP-2 are due to center-column magnet lifetime and blanket feasibility. The major radius increased from 3.6 m to 4.275 m, raising the projected center-column lifetime from 0.22 to 0.6 full-power years. This is a common trend for fusion: as design fidelity increases, important issues like neutron shielding reveal that early designs were too optimistic (more holes!). The breeder blanket changed from liquid lithium to a solid lithium oxide.
New ambient-pressure superconductor record temperature set to 151 K. Probably not practical for fusion but neat technique to achieve it.
Siemens patents a thermal system for a molten salt laser fusion device.
Paper published on Tritium supply and demand for fusion: Socioeconomic scenario modelling. I was initially interested in reading through this to see what present credible tritium projections are. However, just seeing their tritium demand estimates scaled from EU-DEMO based on fusion power (e.g., they calculate 750 g for SPARC, which in fact is 10 g), I couldn’t bring myself to read or believe the rest of the paper.
Misc
FIA releases 2026 Fusion Industry Supply Chain Report. Fusion supply-chain spending reported by surveyed companies rose 24% in 2025 to $538M and is expected to rise another 27% in 2026 to $681M. Many established suppliers are moving toward fusion and expanding capacity. But there are challenges because the market lacks clear, long-term demand.
Tungsten prices have increased nearly 10x since the start of the year. Of course, 80% of the present tungsten supply comes from China (another 5% from Russia and North Korea). Tungsten is useful for fusion as a plasma-facing component because of the excellent thermal properties, low transmutation, low tritium retention, and low sputtering. Tungsten is useful in war because it is dense, hard, and heat resistant. Tungsten used in fusion can likely be recycled; tungsten used in war is likely lost. Recent conflicts have increased tungsten consumption. Taking the early ARC design as an example, it estimated that tungsten was about 0.025% of the total cost, so a 10x increase does not strongly affect the bottom line for fusion.
Quaise Energy raises $134M to build a geothermal plant with fusion technology. It all started with a fusion gyrotron that was gathering dust in a back room at MIT.
Steering Committee formed for fusion materials database (MatDB4Fusion).