Fusion News, July 22, 2026

[00:00:03]Hi everyone and welcome back to the Fusion Industry Association. My name is Kari Smith and I'm a fusion researcher working at Kyoto Fusionering. Today is Wednesday the 22nd of July and I'm here to give you your weekly Fusion news roundup. Today's stories include one, Fusion industry funding hits an annual record. [music] Two, General Fusion makes history in the stock market.

[00:00:23]Three, quantum computers make headway in solving Fusion's fuel problem. And four, Inertia opens new headquarters to commercialize inertial confinement fusion. And make sure to stay tuned for a bonus story at the end. One, Fusion Industry funding hits an annual record.

[00:00:39][music] Our first story today comes from Reuters and covers the newly released 2026 Fusion Industry Association industry report, which covers statistics on fusion industry growth and allows us to quantify progress towards commercialization. The results of the report showed that 56 fusion companies raised a total of $4.48 billion in the last 12 months, which is 69% higher than 2025's total and is the highest reported amount since the survey began in 2021.

[00:01:08]Major funding rounds were completed by FIA members CFS, Inertia Enterprises, Helon Energy, and Proxima [music] Fusion, raising a combined total of $2.296 billion.

[00:01:20]Also highlighted in the report was investment for FIA members General Fusion and TAE Technologies who earlier in the year [music] announced plans to go public. They both received hundreds of millions from investors [music] as part of the process of joining the NASDAQ exchange. These milestones signify a time when companies are looking to access faster capital, have greater visibility, and a stronger market presence. All which helped push the industry forward while encouraging healthy competition and investor participation.

[00:01:51]Also worth noting is the increased effort to establish sighting and power purchase agreements. Six companies stated that they already have a sighting agreement in place and four companies are in the process of acquiring one. In addition, five companies revealed that they have a power purchase agreement.

[00:02:09]This report shows that the fusion industry is fundamentally on its pathway to commercialization, said Andrew Holland, FIA CEO. The thing that's driving a lot of this is the need for new electricity sources, the long-term identified growth of data centers and artificial intelligence. I am thrilled to see such huge progress in private investment and increasing enthusiasm about fusion, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what the next year brings for the industry. Two, General Fusion makes history in the stock market. Our second story comes from TechCrunch. Early this year in January, FIA member General Fusion announced plans to go public on the NASDAQ stock market, which would make it the first ever publicly traded fusion company.

[00:02:53]This announcement came at a time when General Fusion had positioned itself as a leader in the industry with a 20-year track record of delivering and d-risking key fusion technologies. [music] To prepare for the transition, General Fusion merged with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company or spa. Six months later, and General Fusion is now officially listed on the NASDAQ stock market, which coincided with the release of FIA's industry report. General Fusion plans to leverage this new milestone along with increased private investment to continue to advance its technologies, including the magnetized target fusion or MTF technology, which uses electromagnetic fields to create a magnetized plasma inside a chamber aligned with liquid lithium. Once the plasma is formed, the technology uses rings of pistons to compress the lithium around the fuel to allow the atoms to fuse and release energy. This technology will be demonstrated in a large-scale machine called Lawson machine 26. This demonstration device is aimed to be completed in 2028 or later in a fusion power plant online by 2035. Three, quantum computers make headway in solving fusion's fuel problem. Our third story comes from f.org. Quantum computers have now identified nine different configurations of fly salt, [music] a candidate material used to breed tridium. This breakthrough is huge not only because it helps demonstrate the potential of quantum computing to help fusion, but it also gets us a step closer to solving our fuel challenge.

[00:04:24]Having enough fuel is a major barrier to a working fusion pilot plant because of tridium scarcity, which is why we need an efficient way to make it ourselves.

[00:04:34]Fly which is made of lithium fluoride and burillium fluoride is a good candidate for this as it has good mechanical and thermal properties and can serve as a breeding blanket where tridium can be bred in a fusion device.

[00:04:45]A quantum supercomputing technique was developed by the Cleveland Clinic to initially simulate protein configurations and they collaborated with Oakidge National Lab, IBM and Michigan State University to apply the models to simulate molecular configurations of fly. to help us understand more about FIB's electronic structure, atomic behavior, and molecular bonding strength to tridium at a quantum level. These results will help researchers find the optimal configuration for FLB, which is currently a huge challenge due to its complex structure. These results are very promising, and I'm excited to see even more ingenuity come out of this collaboration. Four, Inertia opens new headquarters to commercialize inertial confinement fusion. Our fourth story comes from Axios. FIA member and Liverour based startup Inertia is on a mission to build the world's most powerful laser just a few years after the 2022 fusion ignition breakthrough using inertial confinement at the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. According to Inertia, this laser will be comprised of 1,000 smaller lasers, each 20 times more powerful than N. They recently opened a new 50,000 square foot headquarters in which they are planning to build the world's first fusion fuel factory which will massproduce fusion fuel targets more powerful than two Falcon rockets and build laser systems that will eventually be used in fusion power plants. The facility will become an end-to-end production line for the fuel capsules by this time next year with a gigawatt scale power plant planned for 2030 and power generation several years later. Inertia co-founder and CEO Jeff Lawson said in a statement that Livermore is where fusion ignition first became a reality. Today, we're building on that foundation to turn proven physics into commercial fusion energy.

[00:06:39]It's really exciting to see the rapid growth that Inertia has undergone this year as they tackle solving key technological challenges that will transform the world. That's all for the main stories today, but before you go, we have a bonus story for you. Our bonus story this week comes from New Atlas and follows General Atomics as they have just received a $20 million tax credit from the state of California to help build a new blanket test facility in San Diego. This facility is being built in collaboration with the US Department of Energy, Idaho National Lab, UC San Diego, and other academic and industry partners. The goal of this facility will be to test breeding blankets at full scale to increase technical readiness, test how well they can handle fusion relevant conditions, and investigate tridium production. The facility will also serve as a hub for scientists and engineers in the field from both public and private sectors to come together to closely collaborate on the development of blanket technologies. They say it will also support workforce development and strengthen California's global leadership and fusion. That's all for this week. Thank you for tuning in and supporting this channel. As always, please drop us a like and subscribe to this [music] channel if any stories caught your attention. Their links are provided in the description. See you [music] next time.