Fusion Fortnightly | 2026-03-31
No fluff, all facts.
China aims to lead in fusion energy in new Five Year Plan. CFS CEO picked for U.S. President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. The Wall Street Journal reports on the serendipity of the TAE-TMTG merger.
Government
In the 15th Five Year Plan, China aim to lead in fusion energy. This is in contrast to the 14th Five Year Plan it aimed to “to support the early research and development of controlled nuclear fusion”. As reported on by the New York Times in December, 2025 that has resulted in China rapidly building what probably will become the world’s premier fusion R&D facilities. When China commits to doing something, it does it. So watch out.
The CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems was appointed to President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.. This is a really big sign of the present administration’s commitment to fusion energy. Also on the committee: venture capitalists, Google co-founder, two executives of Oracle, Dell CEO, Oklo (fission startup) CEO, cryptocurrency exchange founder, crop genetics founder, NVIDIA CEO, a quantum computing physics professor, the CEO of AMD, and the CEO of Facebook. This is a highly focused stack.
Europe’s F4E lists out benefits from ITER spending: across 2018–2024, roughly €5.6 billion of expenditure is estimated to have generated about €5.95 billion in additional gross value added and around 39,000 job-years in addition to creating industry and workforce that is knowledgeable and skilled in fusion energy relevant technologies. With the startups sprinting past ITER, the positive legacy of ITER will most likely be centered around the research community coming together and forming the physics basis as well as the supply chain it established.
European Commission adopted the 2026–2027 Euratom work program, committing €330 million total and earmarking €222 million to move fusion “from laboratories to the power grid,” including plans for a new European fusion public-private partnership to commercialize technologies, build a Europe-based supply chain, and use European Innovation Council instruments to help fusion start-ups mature and attract private capital—creating a near-term EU funding and industrial-policy pipeline that fusion developers, component suppliers, and demonstration partners can align to. This is part of ongoing efforts by the EU to adapt alongside the growing private fusion ecosystem.
Funding
India’s Pranos Fusion raises $6.8m seed to build and test a tokamak. Pranos is using high temperature superconductors to build a low aspect ratio tokamak, PRAGYA. They aim to have tokamak design and control software as well as HTS magnets as the core of their technology as well as build tokamaks. PRAGYA is a small-scale tokamak: major radius 0.4 m, minor radius 0.13–0.18 m, aspect ratio 2.22–3.15, planned plasma current up to 25 kA, and toroidal field 0.1 T.
Companies
Sam Altman is stepping down from the Helion Board of Directors. Sam has been a long time investor and board member of Helion. Many say that much of how Helion operates has been shaped by Sam. This is almost certainly not a negative event, as it is probably due to: Axios reported that OpenAI is in advanced talks to buy a guaranteed share of Helion’s future output: 5 GW by 2030 and 50 GW by 2035. Altman was also reported to have recused himself from any deal discussions.
Marvel Fusion is exploring defense, medical, and industrial applications for its laser tech and weighing a U.S. move. This information was apparently leaked by someone familiar with the inner workings of the company. Neither point is surprising. While Europe is improving, it is still far behind the U.S. in deep tech venture capitalists and startups. Fusion companies with a good story and leadership have been able to raise >$100M, Marvel included, which allows them to get a lot of hardware R&D done. They are now finding that there is a finite appetite for funding fusion companies to the ~$1B+ level that is needed to build major fusion facilities and not everyone is going to get a seat at that table. We will continue to have more fusion companies downsizing their major fusion facility R&D plans and looking for opportunities outside of fusion to capitalize on their technology R&D that justify their valuations which were previously set by their fusion aspirations. Marvel may be joining the likes of Tokamak Energy and First Light Fusion in this category.
Focused Energy and the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) announce a $6.9M inertial-fusion research collaboration, LLE’s largest industrial-sponsored research agreement. The Omega laser at LLE and advanced simulation codes will be used to optimize laser and target design for Focused Energy’s fusion reactor design.
Molten Salt Solutions announced that it had signed strategic agreements with Type One Energy and Gauss Fusion to supply enriched lithium. Lithium enrichment is likely needed by many fusion concepts to achieve sufficient tritium breeding. There are a number of companies developing technologies to enrich lithium (turns out fission would rather have lithium-7 and fusion have lithium-6, so both streams have potential markets). Molten Salt Solutions is using a liquid-liquid extraction chemistry with countercurrent chromatography.
Second half of the SPARC vacuum vessel is placed in the tokamak hall. They were built as one unit in Italy and cut in half to allow the toroidal field magnets to be “threaded” over them. Once the magnets are in placed, the two halves will be pushed together and welded.
General Fusion and TAE filed Rule 425 communication reports in relation to a couple of conferences and public statements.] Nothing substaintially new or of note is in this filing. This will likely continue to be the case for the companies going public: plenty of statements and discussion but no new information.
TAE launches multi-state site visits for its first fusion power plant. The only new information of substance is “We have seen tremendous interests from multiple states willing to partner in our exciting path to power.”
Milena Roveda is stepping down as CEO of Gauss Fusion and Chair of the European Fusion Association. While I’ve never met Melena, I was surprised when she was announced as CEO of Gauss. She’s been the Chief Financial Officer at some European technology companies before Gauss, but nothing that would say to me that she’s a good candidate for a fusion startup.
American Fusion, which is quickly growing to be the most interesting public fusion company to watch (not at all because of their fusion plans), announced that its corporate name and ticker change from Renewal Fuels and RNWF to American Fusion and AMFN (don’t confuse it with Amazon AMZN!); that the SEC gave its Form 10-12G registration statement a “no review” designation; and that it obtained a court order canceling 1.683 billion shares that it says were improperly issued under prior management (these are probably the shares of the majority common holder who in the previous fortnightly I noted was convicted of fraud).
Pulsar Fusion claims to achieve first plasma in fusion rocket test. Apparently they used krypton gas, which doesn’t fuse at any reasonably achievable plasma temperatures, and the company website has a lot of information on Hall thrusters. This is one of the stranger private fusion companies. It was founded by a former reality TV cast member and was originally set up to do fusion supply chain technology development. Likely having found themselves ahead of the curve on that business concept, they’ve pivoted to fusion rockets. Their fusion rocket plasma concept is an FRC with D+He3 fuel, which is a bit far out there in present feasibility.
Media
Astera Institute describes how it is working to find 1 cent/kWh fusion energy. A nobile goal, but let’s try to just get it to work to start.
Some mass press articles on fusion going public: Fusion developers go public as AI boom widens funding sources and the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) covers the TAE merger. While the Reuters piece does not have new information, the WSJ article has new public details on the origination of the TAE-TMTG merger: Apparently TAE felt it was being undervalued, “people were just trying to lowball us”, by the private markets in comparison Oklo and NuScale, fission companies that recently went public. TAE explored going public via a SPAC, but faced resistance because the company has the non-fusion business lines based on technologies it developed for fusion. Apparently investors wanted a “simpler story”. The origin of the merger comes from “a casual catch-up between two collge (Ohio Wesleyan University) friends” Jonathan Toretta (TAE Chief Revenue Officer) and Kevin McGurn (a CEO of a couple of SPACs, including one that Truth Social may merge into). In response to the connection of TMTG to the polarizing president of the U.S., the TAE CEO said “TAE is a center company. We’re nether blue nor red.” Also of note are Financial Times and Tech Crunch articles.