MIT spinout building SPARC, a high-field tokamak targeting net energy gain (Q>1).
The Commerce Department signed CHIPS letters of intent on October 22 for up to $389M across four companies, including up to $175M for Helion and $85M for Commonwealth Fusion Systems, with a minority, non-voting federal equity stake as a condition. The money is for power and radiation-hardened semiconductors fusion plants need. These are letters of intent, not final awards.
Records now fall on separate axes — gain 4.1 at NIF, 1,337 s at WEST, 150M°C at Helion — while the fairest physics yardstick, the triple product, still belongs to a 1996 experiment. A read of every fusion number this tracker holds, and what each one does and does not prove.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems raised $1B more in equity, bringing its total to $4B — the largest single fusion round since its own $1.8B in 2021. New backers include pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and infrastructure/industrial corporates. The money finishes SPARC (online next year) and advances the ARC commercial plant in Virginia.
The FIA's 2026 industry report counts a record $4.48B raised by 56 fusion companies in the 12 months to July — up 69% on 2025 — taking cumulative funding to $14.24B (7x since 2021), with 16,000+ employed and all five $1B+ raisers US-based.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems was named the first international partner in UKAEA's £220M LIBRTI tritium-breeding program at Culham — co-designing tests and building blanket articles to validate its ARC breeding-blanket system and demonstrate net tritium production.
Industry tracking put fusion supply-chain spending up 24% from a year earlier — a demand signal across the sector's vendors.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems — CFS published five peer-reviewed papers (58 authors, a Journal of Plasma Physics special issue) laying the physics basis for ARC — its first commercial plant, designed to deliver 400 MW net to the grid in the early 2030s — building on lessons from SPARC.
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Helion Energy 
NIF / LLNL 
WEST (CEA) 
General Fusion 
Proxima Fusion