Fusion Fortnightly | 2026-07-21
No fluff, all facts.
General Fusion stock starts trading. Realta announces move to former hot dog factory. F4E publishes Global Fusion Energy Trends report.
Companies
General Fusion completes deSPAC with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. III. General Fusion began trading on Nasdaq on July 13 under GFUZ.
General Fusion files SEC Form 20-F with details on how the deSPAC closed. The main news is that 91.6% of the SPAC investors chose to take their money back instead of keeping shares, redeeming about $217m.
General Fusion still ended up with about $170m in cash, most of which came from private investors and money the company already had.
The private investors got a very favorable deal: a 12% annual return that can be added to what General Fusion owes them, plus warrants that let them buy more shares at $12 if the stock’s value goes up. If General Fusion’s stock falls or the company later raises money at a lower price, those investors can receive more shares, diluting ordinary shareholders.
The lead investor also received 3.5m shares for almost nothing. After five years, these investors can ask General Fusion to repay their preferred shares in cash, which could exceed $225m. The deSPAC bought General Fusion time, but at a price: future shareholders face substantial dilution, and the company may need another major financing or refinancing by July 2031.
Meteora Capital, a specialist in event-driven SPAC trades, did some large trades around the General Fusion deSPAC, as noted in this SEC Schedule 13G. SEC Form 25 indicates the removal of Spring Valley from Nasdaq, part of the process of listing General Fusion. SEC Form 4 indicates that the merger was completed on the previously negotiated terms. An SEC Schedule 13G indicates that RichRich Capital sold its entire position in General Fusion.
SEC Forms 3 were filed for General Fusion’s leadership, indicating their stock and option interests and compensation in the company, including Gregory Twinney, Wendy Kei, Thomas Boehlert, Klaas de Boer, Jan Laishley, Mark Little, Ross Donaldson, and Megan Wilson.
The Financial Times reports on General Fusion going public, including some comments from me and Tony Donné.
TAE+TMTG have released a series of SEC Forms 8-K; nothing relates directly to the fusion half of the business: George Holding has resigned from the TMTG Board of Directors; TMTG announced a new API that allows paid, quicker access to information; and TMTG has resolved all claims with Patrick Orlando and ARC Global Investments II LLC, the former CEO and the SPAC that took TMTG public.
Realta Fusion announced that it is moving its headquarters to the former Oscar Mayer plant in Madison. The city and state have committed up to $55M to support this move, including tax exemptions and credits. Next week, CFS will announce its relocation to the Dunkin’ Donuts bakery and Proxima to the Rischart Bavarian bakery. Who’s next to move to a facility that made food in the shape of its plasma?
Commonwealth Fusion Systems posted a SPARC project update. CFS said its cryogenic plant is operating and circulating cryogenic fluid through magnet-cooling subsystems, and that the upcoming “dry dress rehearsal” will run the plant as if it were powering a fusion pulse while tokamak assembly continues in parallel. Standard plant commissioning work: bringing systems online for operation.
StandardX comes out of stealth. From Kyoto Fusioneering co-founder Richard Pearson and nuclear physicist Ross Allen comes “the world’s first isotope refinery: a single accelerator platform that produces the full portfolio of isotopes from one machine.” They plan on using a fixed-field alternating-gradient accelerator. I am seeing a lot of companies planning on isotope production. See the StandardX website for the menu of isotopes they would like to sell to you, including tritium.
Plasma-control startup Fusionality comes out of stealth. It was co-founded by Federico Felici, a longtime plasma-control expert, and Jonas Buchli, a robotics expert, both of whom are research scientists at DeepMind.
The Onion owner’s fusion company, Inertia, opens its headquarters in Livermore, CA. The six-month conversion of the facility marks a major advance in humanity’s decades-long effort to construct the building where fusion might happen.
Larmor mmWave Systems receives $50k to commercialize gyrotrons for fusion, co-founded by Massimo Carpita and Mack Van Rossem of EPFL.
Pacific Fusion’s pulsed-power prototype completes 3,000 shots. An important achievement in scaling up its system. At about 1 Hz for its power plant, 3,000 shots would take about an hour, so another factor of 10,000 is needed to reach a one-year-equivalent shot lifetime. I wonder whether reaching this rep rate was the major hurdle or whether a lot of effort will be needed to progress through the next couple of decades of shots.
Kyoto Fusioneering announced a strategic partnership with NGK to jointly develop and commercialize FLiBe. NGK, a leading producer of beryllium copper, should help a lot with the beryllium-handling side of things.
Type One Energy hosted an open house near its planned Tennessee facility. More than 150 people attended.
Starlight Engine has raised $37m to lead the Japanese FAST project.
Barclays joins Type One Energy, Tokamak Energy, and AECOM in the UK Infinity Fusion Consortium.
Eternafusion gets $1.6m to develop tokamak current-injection technology.
Avalanche announces the availability of a 300 kV feedthrough product based on its high-voltage R&D.
American Fusion moves its HQ to North Texas and announces patent filings, states that its CTO is presenting its fusion concept at the APS Division of Particles and Fields meeting (the standard APS meeting for this would be the Division of Plasma Physics meeting), where his abstract states that he will talk about black holes, reports that it has received a Certificate for Industrial Radiation Machines from the Texas Department of State Health Services, and has up to 1 GW covered for research purposes.
Government
F4E publishes the first Global Fusion Energy Trends report. This is a really nice compilation of the state of fusion development internationally, covering China, the EU, Japan, the UK, and the US. There are really useful figures placing machines under construction in the context of what has already been achieved and showing timelines for planned facilities. It also shows data on things like publications and patents (China is patenting a lot, but only domestically!). Finally, there’s a comparison of regulatory timelines in the major regions. We’re seeing different strategies unfold in each region. Which one will be the most successful at developing fusion?
New facility in Denmark to test remote-handling robotics for fusion.
New research consortium tests materials for fusion power plants. It combines expertise and experimental capability in high heat flux, neutron irradiation, and material characterization.
UKAEA published its procurement pipeline for those wanting a window into what it plans to procure and do.
F4E opened applications for its Supply Chain Excellence Award.
People
Nancy Lipson has joined Zap Energy as Chief Legal Officer. Nancy spent most of her career as Deputy Counsel and then Chief Legal Officer of Newmont Corporation, a publicly traded mining company and the “world’s leading gold company.” Perhaps this is a sign that Zap is thinking about going public.
Derek Sutherland has been promoted to Chief Science Officer at Realta. Derek has one of the most diverse backgrounds in private fusion.
Gauss Fusion appoints Dr. Uwe Bau as its new CEO. Uwe has a PhD in nonlinear control, worked at McKinsey, and was the head of the semiconductor equipment business section at RI Research Instruments.