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Commonwealth Fusion Systems said it will receive $85 million from the U.S. Department of Commerce under the CHIPS Act to develop advanced power electronics for fusion plants, with the government taking a stake in the company. The funds will support silicon carbide power electronics, radiation-hardened and radio-frequency components, and adapting AI chips like GPUs and TPUs for use in fusion reactors.
Cambridge, Massachusetts startup Cambridge Heavy Industries has been developing a small, benchtop fusion reactor near MIT that uses lasers to compress a fuel target in an inertial confinement approach. CEO Yun Kai says the compact design allows 50 to 80 test shots per day, with data feeding AI-driven simulations to refine the reactor. The company has raised a $6.2 million seed round led by Azolla Ventures, with Overlay, Neta Foundation, P3A, MassCEC, and the Rothrock family also participating.
Licube, a startup licensing lithium separation technology from Hirosaki University in Japan, is presenting at TechCrunch Disrupt's Startup Battlefield. The company aims to purify lithium-6, a rare isotope that fusion reactors need to breed tritium fuel on site, since it makes up only about 7.5% of naturally occurring lithium. CEO Yohei Kiguchi told TechCrunch he expects the lithium-6 market to reach $50 billion by 2040 if fusion power becomes commercially viable.
Knoxville-based startup Type One Energy announced it has raised $200 million in a Series B funding round. The company plans to use the funds to build a 400-megawatt fusion power plant, aiming for completion by 2034. Their approach involves designing the plant and sourcing components from a network of specialized suppliers to reduce costs.
Jeff Lawson, who co-founded and scaled Twilio to over $4 billion in revenue, is now leading Inertia, a fusion energy startup. He will speak about this career shift at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 in a fireside chat on the Smart Systems Stage, discussing how his software background applies to a capital-intensive deep tech venture involving lasers and manufacturing.
Xcimer, a laser-based fusion startup, has struck a partnership and investment deal with RTX, the conglomerate that owns Raytheon. The move reflects a broader trend of fusion companies seeking defense industry backing as climate tech venture funding tightens, reviving fusion's historical ties to national security research.
Federico Felici and Jonas Buchli, former Google DeepMind researchers, have founded Fusionality in Lausanne to build standardized hardware and software for controlling fusion reactors. The company raised $3.7 million in pre-seed funding from Founderful and Playfair, with Felici as CEO and Buchli as CTO.
Pacific Fusion has started construction on a new demonstration facility in Albuquerque designed to test whether its pulsed-power approach to fusion can achieve net facility gain, producing more energy than the entire facility consumes. The company says no other US facility under construction targets this milestone, and it aims to reach it by 2030 en route to a commercial plant in the mid-2030s.