Trillion-Dollar "Suns" Race: Who Is Shortening the Distance from Lab to Grid for Nuclear Fusion?

In July 2026, the Fusion Industry Association (FIA, the global industry association for the nuclear fusion sector) released the "2026 Global Fusion Industry Report." Fifty-six fusion companies raised a combined $4.48 billion over the past 12 months, setting the highest record since the survey began in 2021, a year-on-year increase of 69%. Cumulative global fusion funding has reached $14.242 billion, approximately RMB 96.388 billion, seven times that of 2021.

Just half a month later, on July 30, leading U.S. fusion company Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) announced the completion of $1 billion in new equity funding, bringing its cumulative funding to $4 billion, accounting for approximately 30% of total global fusion industry funding. Earlier, on July 13, Canada's General Fusion listed on Nasdaq through a SPAC merger, becoming the world's first publicly listed nuclear fusion company, with its share price closing up 20.61% on the first day.

Behind the rush of capital is a more fundamental driving force: AI computing power is devouring electricity. Wood Mackenzie predicts that by 2030, China's data center electricity consumption will quadruple to 774 terawatt-hours. SoftBank Group founder Masayoshi Son asserted directly in a public speech in July 2026 that nuclear fusion technology will provide the most practical solution to meet the growing electricity demand of AI data centers, projecting that global data centers will require 3 terawatts of capacity by 2040.

The fusion sector's "no shortage of money" is essentially a capitalized expression of energy anxiety. And in this global race, what role are Chinese companies and cities playing?

Five "Billion-Dollar Club" Members and China's Power

Global fusion funding is accelerating its concentration among top players. Five companies have now raised cumulative funding exceeding $1 billion: CFS ($4 billion), TAE Technologies ($1.79 billion), Helion Energy ($1.5 billion), Pacific Fusion and SHINE Technologies (approximately $1 billion each).

Among them, Helion Energy completed a $465 million Series G round in June 2026, reaching a post-money valuation of $15.5 billion. The core driver of this round was funding the "Orion" project, the first commercial fusion power plant being built for Microsoft. As early as 2023, Helion had signed a power purchase agreement with Microsoft for at least 50 megawatts. TAE Technologies is advancing toward a public listing through an all-stock merger with Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), with a post-merger valuation exceeding $6 billion, having received $200 million in cash from TMTG.

In Europe, German stellarator company Proxima Fusion completed a €411 million Series A2 round in July 2026, with a valuation exceeding €2.4 billion, with investors including Google and German energy giant RWE. This round made it the largest fusion company by funding in Europe.

In terms of technology pathway distribution, the FIA report shows that among the 56 surveyed companies, 26 (46%) adopt the magnetic confinement approach, 12 (21%) adopt the inertial confinement approach, and 9 (16%) adopt the magneto-inertial fusion approach. Regarding fuel choice, 40 companies use deuterium-tritium (D-T) as their primary fusion fuel.

It is worth noting that although U.S. companies dominate (28 companies), companies from 12 other countries are joining, including 4 from China, 4 from the UK, and 4 from Germany. The global fusion industry directly employs approximately 5,606 people, and including supply chain-related employment, the total exceeds 16,000.

Three Pathways in Parallel: Who Will Get There First?

Unlike U.S. companies, which are mainly concentrated in the magnetic confinement tokamak pathway, China's fusion commercialization shows a more diversified technological path differentiation.

The "twin stars" of the tokamak pathway. Star Torus Energy (Xinghuan Juneng) originated from a Tsinghua University technology transfer project, with core team members having worked in the fusion field for over 20 years, and is China's first spherical tokamak research team. In January 2026, it completed a RMB 1 billion Series A round, and in May completed an additional RMB 500 million Series A+ round, with cumulative funding exceeding RMB 2 billion, planning to build a fusion demonstration reactor capable of delivering electricity around 2032. Energy Singularity (Nengliang Qidian) is China's first commercial private nuclear fusion energy device company. Its all-high-temperature superconducting tokamak "Honghuang 70" achieved 1,337 seconds of steady-state long-pulse plasma operation in February 2026, benefiting from optimization of AI plasma feedback control technology. Co-founder Ye Yuming stated that private enterprises are "positioned as solution providers for future nuclear power plant owners."

The differentiated pathway of hydrogen-boron fusion. ENN Fusion (Xin'ao Julong) chose a technology pathway that very few companies globally are systematically pursuing—spherical torus hydrogen-boron fusion. In July 2026, it completed its first funding round, with a post-money valuation of RMB 10.6 billion, becoming the highest-valued private enterprise in China's fusion sector, with investors including Loongson Venture Capital, CAS Star, Matrix Partners China, and CDH Investments. The appeal of hydrogen-boron fusion lies in: abundant and easily accessible fuel reserves, no neutron radiation during the reaction process, and safety and environmental friendliness. ENN has invested over RMB 4 billion cumulatively in fusion R&D, having built two generations of experimental devices "Xuanlong-50" and "Xuanlong-50U," with comprehensive parameters reaching the world's highest level. The company plans to complete the "Helong-2" device by the end of 2027, light the first hydrogen-boron fusion lamp by 2030, and enter the commercial demonstration phase by 2035.

The "Chinese phalanx" of stellarators. This pathway, known as the "crown of magnetic confinement" due to the complex engineering structure of three-dimensional shaped magnets, suddenly entered global capital's view after Germany's W7-X achieved 43 seconds of high-performance long-pulse discharge in 2025. Hefei has rapidly gathered a cluster of stellarator companies—Xinghe Fusion, Weilan Hengxing, Yanchao Juneng and others have each secured hundreds of millions of yuan in funding. Xinghe Fusion has laid out an engineering path with three generations of devices, aiming to build three devices before 2030, pushing China's stellarator technology from "catching up" to "running in parallel."

This multi-pathway parallel landscape is consistent with the FIA report's judgment that "technology pathways have not yet converged to a single path." The advantage is reducing systemic risk from a single technology pathway; the cost is relatively dispersed resources.

Hefei, Shanghai, Chengdu: Who Is Racing to Be the "Fusion City"?

China's fusion industrialization is forming a multi-city race pattern.

Hefei's advantage lies in the "full chain." Relying on the three national-level devices on Science Island—EAST, BEST, and CRAFT—Hefei has gathered more than 70 enterprises across the nuclear fusion industry chain, covering the full chain from upstream materials, midstream equipment manufacturing, to downstream construction and operations, and plans to build a 23,000-mu fusion science and innovation demonstration zone. Chain leader Fusion New Energy (Julong Xinneng) has joined forces with nearly 200 domestic institutions to break through technologies such as superconducting magnets and high-temperature materials, and the BEST core supply chain has gathered at least 16 A-share listed companies. Hefei has also promoted matchmaking between 14 industry chain enterprises including Laideng Cryogenics, Shuyan Juchuang, and Shenci Technology and investment institutions such as Zijin Mining Investment, Guoyuan Equity, and CAS Star through nuclear fusion industry chain matchmaking roadshows.

Shanghai's approach is the "ecosystem alliance." In August 2026, Shanghai International Group and China Fusion Corporation joined hands with 19 enterprises including Xinghuan Juneng and Shanghai Superconductor to jointly initiate the "Fusion Ecosystem Alliance." Shanghai's cumulative funding in this future industry is approaching RMB 18 billion, with Shanghai International Group having invested over RMB 1 billion cumulatively, leveraging nearly RMB 10 billion in social capital into the nuclear fusion sector. The first major fusion science facility laid out after the state-owned China Fusion Energy Corporation settled in Shanghai—China Circulator No. 4 (HL-4)—is tackling 25-tesla high-temperature superconducting high-field magnets, with 9 enterprises jointly setting key milestone targets for 2028 and 2030 respectively.

Chengdu is focusing its efforts on the materials side. The Phase II project of the Tianfu Fusion Technology R&D Center of China Fusion Energy Corporation has begun construction in Sichuan Tianfu New Area, with a total planned land area of approximately 500 mu, focusing on the core challenge of "irradiation-resistant structural material damage in fusion reactors," and planning to build a comprehensive irradiation facility for fusion reactor materials. Once fully completed, it will become one of the largest and most functionally complete fusion R&D bases in China.

The differentiated positioning of the three cities—Hefei for engineering integration, Shanghai for capital ecosystem, Chengdu for materials research—reflects the trend of China's fusion industry moving from "single-point breakthroughs" to "collaborative division of labor."

Q>1 Is Not the Finish Line; Tritium Self-Sufficiency Is the "Gate of Hell"

Beneath the enthusiasm of capital and policy, the hard bones of fusion engineering are far from being fully chewed through.

The tritium self-sustaining cycle is the most prominent bottleneck. A 1-gigawatt-class fusion power plant may consume approximately 0.45 kilograms of tritium per day, but tritium barely exists in nature, with global commercial stock at only about 25 to 30 kilograms, and highly dependent on byproducts from Canada's CANDU fission reactors. To achieve fuel self-sufficiency, fusion reactors must rely on lithium-6 online breeding, with a breeding ratio typically needing to exceed 1.1 to compensate for retention and decay losses. However, there is currently a lack of a mature commercial lithium-6 supply chain globally. Some research calculations show that the effective tritium breeding ratio can only reach 0.877, far below the 1.1 threshold. The U.S. Department of Energy listed FLiBe (fluorine-lithium-beryllium molten salt) as the preferred material for fusion blankets in June 2026, but there is still a distance to engineering application.

Irradiation-resistant materials are another bottleneck. Fusion reactor structural materials will develop nanovoids under intense neutron irradiation, leading to swelling, hardening, and creep. Current research shows that Bi-2212 superconductors will gradually lose crystal order and become completely amorphous under irradiation, while Nb₃Al superconductors can maintain crystal structure after longer exposure, and material selection faces a real test. Chinese teams have made breakthroughs in oxide dispersion-strengthened tungsten-based irradiation-resistant components, but large-scale engineering verification remains to be advanced.

Regarding commercialization timelines, the FIA report shows that 71% of fusion companies still expect the first fusion power plant to achieve commercial power supply in the 2030s. However, 67% of surveyed companies list financing as the biggest short-term challenge, down from 84% in 2025, indicating that the capital environment is improving.

In China, the BEST device campus was officially delivered and put into use on October 1, 2026, with the main machine entering the core assembly stage of "four-ring assembly," striving to complete overall construction by the end of 2027, and conducting deuterium-tritium fusion power generation demonstrations around 2030, with the goal of achieving Q≥1. China Fusion Energy Corporation is fully advancing the R&D of the world's first high-temperature superconducting high-field steady-state burning plasma experimental platform—China Circulator No. 4—planning to systematically verify the reliability of 25-tesla high-temperature superconducting high-field magnets in complex fusion environments.

From "Always 50 Years Away" to "Results Within a Decade"

The nuclear fusion industry is undergoing a narrative transformation.

In the past, it was a scientific dark joke that "always needs another 50 years." Now, 56 fusion companies worldwide, over 16,000 practitioners, nearly RMB 100 billion in cumulative funding, from Nasdaq listings to power purchase agreement signings, are transforming fusion from a physics concept into an industry track with capital, companies, and a timetable.

But looking calmly, this race is far from the finish line. Q>1 has not yet been universally verified in truly burning plasma, the tritium self-sustaining cycle is still in the transition stage from laboratory to engineering, and there is no data accumulation on the multi-year reliability of irradiation-resistant materials. The FIA report's finding that 67% of companies list financing as the biggest challenge shows that even with an improved capital environment, "not enough money" remains an industry consensus.

The true value of the fusion industry may not lie in whether it can light the first lamp on schedule in the 2030s, but in the fact that it has already spawned a complete industrial chain from superconducting materials to precision manufacturing, from AI control to vacuum systems. These accumulated capabilities are themselves assets for industrial upgrading.

When AI data centers begin to "eat electricity," and when energy security becomes a core variable in great power competition, nuclear fusion is no longer just a scientific dream, but an industrial proposition that needs to be fulfilled through engineering capability. The answer to this proposition will not be written in papers, but on the day the first kilowatt-hour of fusion electricity is fed into the grid.

The 2026 fusion boom is essentially a breakthrough expedition launched by humanity under the dual crisis of computing power and energy, mobilizing top-tier capital and intellect. It ended the long-standing scientific cold shoulder and catalyzed a collaborative awakening from fundamental physics to cutting-edge industrial supply chains. But it must be remembered that the physical laws of nature cannot be leapfrogged by the will of capital, and grand commercial narratives must ultimately withstand the cold test of every neutron, every gram of tritium, and every ampere of strong magnetic field. Only by gnawing through the engineering hard bones of materials and fuel with the most reverent mindset, when the first truly stable, self-sustaining electric energy generated by fusion is injected into the grid, will this journey of chasing light that began at the turn of the century truly welcome the dawn. (This article is based on public industry research reports, industrial investment and financing dynamics, and publicly available academic information, compiled through fact organization, logical reconstruction, and comprehensive analysis by an artificial intelligence system. It aims to provide a panoramic industry perspective that combines industrial depth with technological objectivity, for reference in decision-making and discussion only.)