FUSION INDUSTRY SNAPSHOT | COVER STORY
Above: Helion’s pulsed fusion technology secured $65 million in investment in the last 12 months
commercialisation, the consistent and growing investment from both private and public sectors is vital for overcoming the scientific and engineering challenges that remain, the report observes. As Holland says: “We’ve seen a lot more public finance
going into private companies and that is new.” He also highlights multiple government initiatives designed to support the sector with finance and other support mechanisms. “There are new programmes that have been put in place in multiple countries. The United States has its Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program, Germany has instituted a new programme though funding hasn’t started flowing yet so we’ll see more coming in that space, the UK and even the European Union is getting a plan put in place, Japan is as well so we see this as not only an important signal for this year but that it’s going to be a continued area of growth in the future.” In June 2024 the United States announced eight
companies had signed contracts with the Department of Energy to deliver comprehensive pilot plant designs under its programme. The German government’s new ‘Fusion 2040’ scheme will invest directly into private companies. The Japanese government’s ‘Moonshot’ program, the UK’s new ‘Fusion Futures’ programme and the European Union’s recent effort to create a consortium that will define how it will invest in private fusion by 2026 are all recent examples of public-private partnership efforts. This is important given the changing characteristics of
the investment landscape. Holland points to previous FIA annual reports which show a trend of declining investment in the sector but Holland nonetheless remains buoyant, saying: “The year before it was over $1bn and then the year before that was well over $2bn though that funding came predominantly at the end of 2021, which was zero interest rate times and investor money flowed pretty freely. Since then, we’ve seen inflation come in and a lot of other issues so that the total [investment] number is down but I can also say from investors that very significant amounts of investment have not yet been publicly announced.” He also points to recent announcements which aren’t yet included in these figures. For example, South Korea recently announced a government project worth KRW1.2 trn (US$878m) focused on harnessing fusion through a private sector-led fusion ecosystem. The initiative is separate from K-STAR and South Korea’s ITER contributions and aims to foster public-private collaboration that can integrate the engineering capabilities of the private sector with the scientific research expertise of public institutions.
“We only report when the money actually flows into the
company so the fact that the Koreans announced a new $900m programme we wouldn’t report. Usually, it takes time to set up a programme, complete applications and select those companies to move forward. In the US that took two years between the time the milestone programme was announced and when it was finally signed and done.” He continues: “We’re seeing that growth in public investment pushing into these technologies perhaps coinciding with a slight downturn in private capital. That level of support is there and that trend is continuing beyond the window of this particular report.”
Confidence grows With total funding now more than $7bn, even in the face of continued challenges in raising capital for deep technology ventures, the investment underscores growing confidence in fusion technology’s potential on a timescale relevant to investors. And, at the same time as fusion investment structures are evolving, industry confidence is also on the rise. The Global Fusion Industry in 2024 report, FIA’s fourth annual assessment, surveyed 45 private fusion companies. This is up from the 43 companies which contributed last year with three new entrants, while one company withdrew its efforts to commercialise its own fusion power plant and instead became a supplier to fusion companies, remaining active in the fusion industry as a key partner. This is translating into increased industry optimism that fusion power will be grid connected on a similar time frame to Small Modular Reactor (SMR) technologies, around the mid-2030s. “The very large majority of companies, nearly 90%, report that they expect to see fusion energy on the grid in the 2030s or before and 70% expect to see fusion energy on the grid in 2035 or before. This is a decadal time frame, an ambitious time frame. It’s not companies saying we wish that this will happen this is them saying we expect to see it happen,” observes Holland. These timelines are little changed since the FIA’s annual
report was first produced in 2021 “The industry is hitting its own milestones, and remains on track,” Holland says. He continues, adding: “There is definitely a sentiment that there are certain things that will be solved in the near term, and it is what people think of as the harder parts of fusion – the actual plasma physics and plasma containment. We’ve seen optimism both in this report and anecdotally that they’re confident that when companies build the machine it will work.”
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