On April 8, 2026, ARPA-E Director Conner Prochaska stood before the audience at the 2026 Energy Innovation Summit in San Diego and announced the largest fusion investment in the agency's history: $135 million over the next 18 months to accelerate the commercialization of fusion energy. For context, ARPA-E has invested approximately $134 million in fusion across the past 12 years. This single commitment doubles the agency's entire fusion portfolio.
The money will flow through competitive funding programs targeting four specific technical barriers:
- More efficient, lower-cost plasma heating and driver systems
- Advanced fuels and novel fueling techniques
- Next-generation pulsed power and power conversion systems for a smaller plant footprint
- Plant designs and components that improve durability and economic competitiveness
This is a meaningful step forward. It is not the final step. But perfection is the enemy of progress, a lesson the fusion community has learned before.
Fusion will only reach the grid if vendors, materials companies, and component manufacturers are positioned to deliver at scale. Readiness across the supply chain is the central problem, and the clock is ticking.
Why $135 Million Matters More Than Its Size Suggests
Critics will note, correctly, that $135 million is modest compared to the billions flowing from private capital into fusion startups. The Fusion Industry Association has been clear that the broader DOE needs to make larger, sustained commitments. The FY2027 budget request includes a proposed 43% cut to ARPA-E's overall budget and a $50 million reduction to DOE fusion energy sciences. These are strong headwinds.
But ARPA-E's role was never to fund deployment at scale. Its mission is to place bets on high-risk, pre-competitive technology that private investors cannot yet price or predict. That model has a track record: since launching its first fusion program (ALPHA) in 2014, ARPA-E-funded projects have spun out companies including Zap Energy, Realta Fusion, Thea Energy, LaserFusionX, and TerraFusion. Those investments have catalyzed more than $1.5 billion in private follow-on funding.
The U.S. fusion company count has grown from 12 to more than 50 in that same window. ARPA-E didn’t cause all of that growth, but it seeded it.
As Director Prochaska framed it, the question is no longer whether fusion is possible, but how fast it reaches the grid… and whether America leads. That framing carries a competitive subtext. China is investing heavily in fusion. The U.S.’s new $10 million DOE Office of Fusion, proposed in the FY2027 budget, is a structural acknowledgment that the federal government needs more than episodic funding bursts. It needs a dedicated home for a fusion strategy. $135 million is a strong opening signal that ARPA-E is pressing for this advantage while the broader policy apparatus catches up.
Choke Points: Power Conversion and Pulsed Power
Of the four ARPA-E funding focus areas, next-generation pulsed power and power conversion systems have the most immediate relevance to the commercial supply chain. This is where reactor physics meets electrical engineering, and where material selection determines whether a design is buildable at commercial cost. Companies like Peak Nano and E&P Technologies are already delivering solutions.
Every fusion machine, whether it uses inertial confinement (pulsed-laser), magnetic confinement (tokamaks, stellarators), or magnetized-target approaches, depends on high-energy-density capacitor systems. Pulsed power architectures require capacitors that can store massive amounts of energy, discharge it in microseconds, survive millions of charge-discharge cycles, and operate reliably at elevated temperatures. The capacitors inside these systems are not commodity parts. They demand dielectric films that perform at the boundary of materials science.
Here’s the physics of why this is hard. Conventional biaxially oriented polypropylene (BOPP) film, the current industry standard, has a dielectric constant near 2.2, a practical operating ceiling around 85°C, and energy density limitations. This results in the need for large capacitor banks to deliver the stored energy a fusion pulse demands. Larger banks mean more components, more cooling infrastructure, more facility space, and higher capital cost. For fusion economics to work, these numbers have to come down.
What NanoPlex HDC Delivers for Fusion Pulsed Power
Peak Nano's NanoPlex™ HDC capacitor films address this requirement directly. Produced through a proprietary coextrusion and nanolayer multiplication process, NanoPlex HDC delivers dielectric constants in the 3.7 to 4.8 range, representing up to 4X the energy density of BOPP. Operating temperature under DC bias has been validated to 105°C with no derating, a critical advantage in fusion environments where thermal management is a constant constraint. The films are engineered for million-shot lifecycle durability, matching the operational demands of pulsed power systems that fire repeatedly over decades of service life.
Peak Nano's fusion energy market partner, E&P Technologies, brings capacitor design and integration expertise that translates NanoPlex HDC film performance into fieldable power systems. The partnership bridges the gap between advanced materials and the power conversion hardware fusion developers need to spec and procure: smaller, lighter, more energy-dense capacitor banks.
This translates directly to plant economics. Higher energy density film means fewer, longer-lasting capacitors. Fewer capacitors means smaller banks with fewer interconnects and less cooling infrastructure. Smaller banks mean a reduced facility footprint and lower capital costs. ARPA-E's explicit goal of reducing plant footprints and improving economic competitiveness maps precisely to these structural cost reductions.
The Supply Chain Is Key to Commercialization
Fusion has a physics problem. It also has a supply chain problem. The physics problem gets the headlines. But the supply chain problem will determine whether fusion plants can be built on a timeline and at a cost that attracts utility-scale investment.
Consider the capacitor film market. More than 70% of global capacitor film production originates in China. U.S. domestic manufacturing of high-performance capacitor films has been, until recently, functionally nonexistent. Every fusion machine requires what iPulse’s Randy Curry has described as "warehouses of capacitors." A single commercial fusion machine could consume more than 20 million pounds of capacitor film over its operational life. Multiply that across a fleet of machines, and the supply chain math becomes existential.
The fusion industry has an opportunity the solar and EV battery industries missed… to build the supply chain correctly from the start, before concentration becomes a geopolitical crisis. Solar's dependence on Chinese polysilicon created vulnerabilities that took a decade to unwind. EV battery supply chains face analogous risks. Fusion can do better, and ARPA-E's investment in enabling technologies will help.
Peak Nano manufactures NanoPlex films in Valley View, Ohio. They’re 100% U.S.-engineered and manufactured, with no reliance on Chinese supply chains. That matters not just for national security or trade policy, but for the risk calculus fusion developers, investors, regulators, and insurers apply as they look for secure, reliable plant materials to source.
The supply chain for fusion energy isn’t a phase-two problem. It is a phase-one requirement.
What Comes Next for Fusion Companies
The specific programs under ARPA-E's $135 million commitment are still being defined. Competitive funding opportunities will follow. For companies working in pulsed power, power conversion, advanced materials, and balance-of-plant components, this is the signal to engage.
ARPA-E's investment won’t commercialize fusion by itself. But it funds the hardest pre-commercial problems, in the right focus areas, at a moment when the private sector is watching closely.
The supply chain needs to be ready when the call comes. The companies that show up with proven, manufacturable technology will shape how fast fusion moves to grid-connected power.
Peak Nano Systems, LLC is a U.S.-based manufacturer of NanoPlex nanolayered thermoplastic films for high-energy-density capacitors, power electronics, and barrier applications. E&P Technologies is Peak Nano's fusion energy market partner for capacitor system design and integration.
