SCSP AI + Fusion Recap: The Technology That Will Shape America’s Future

The Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP) AI+ Fusion Summit, held on October 14th in Washington, D.C., convened senior leaders from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), national laboratories, and the private sector to explore how artificial intelligence (AI) and fusion energy are shaping the next era of U.S. innovation. The event put forth a powerful message: AI and fusion are converging technologies that will define America’s economy, national security, and global leadership in the decades to come.

Fusion and AI Are Accelerating One Another

U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright opened the summit by declaring, “Fusion matters. We have AI, which will be a tremendous enabling technology for fusion, and the development of fusion will be an enabling technology for supercharging the growth of AI.” That synergy will power America’s new technological leadership.

Bob Mumgaard, CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), elaborated on this message, explaining how AI is revolutionizing fusion development with integrated digital models that allow for real-time optimization. “Inside a fusion power plant, the heart of it is plasma, a complex system that dances and shifts. With AI models, we can now accelerate computation and design cycles thousands of times faster. That means we can optimize reactor performance in real time, not years later.”

In a joint session with NVIDIA, Mumgaard and Tom Gibbs, NVIDIA’s Manager of Developer Relations, discussed how GPU computing power is accelerating breakthroughs across CFS’s platforms. “One of the codes we work with used to take two or three weeks to convert. The neural network we trained runs a thousand times faster. That means we can move from concept to design in a single cycle,” said Gibbs. Together, the two companies are building the foundation for “digital twins.” These are AI-assisted virtual replicas of fusion systems capable of predicting performance and system response during live operation, a capability never before achieved in fusion research.

Experts like Steve Cowley of Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and Scott Parent of Ansys described AI as the bridge between research and commercialization. “Fusion will benefit from AI more than almost any other technology,” said Cowley. “It’s a complex, dynamic system, and only AI can optimize it in real time.”

DOE’s Expanding Leadership in Fusion

Secretary Wright used the summit to preview the release of the DOE’s new Fusion Science and Technology Roadmap, a landmark document that aligns federal efforts with industry-led innovation. “It’s not just research and lab work anymore. We have commercial money in the game, and progress is accelerating,” he said. Contrasting fusion’s promise with stagnation in renewables, Wright pointed to the $5 trillion invested in wind and $1.2 trillion in solar with limited return: “Fusion is the real deal. It’s how we transform the world economy while providing the clean energy we actually need.”

The DOE’s role in fusion and AI development is pivotal, providing a level of infrastructure, technical expertise, and credibility that private firms cannot replicate. Its network of national labs, including Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), continues to lead in fusion research, materials science, and high-performance computing. Programs like DOE’s milestone-based funding model, publicly announced in September 2022, have proven highly effective, with each federal dollar attracting approximately five dollars in private capital. Through initiatives such as the Fusion Innovation Research Engine (FIRE) Collaboratives, DOE is fostering public-private consortia that directly target critical technology barriers, from advanced materials to plasma confinement systems.

Public-Private Partnerships Are Key to Scale

A recurring theme across the summit was that fusion progress requires collaboration between government, industry, and academia. As Wright put it, “The goal is not just to fund fusion; it’s to attract capital and accelerate innovation.”

DOE’s leadership, including Jean Paul Allain, highlighted how the department’s roadmap “aligns public and private efforts toward commercially relevant milestones and supply chain readiness.” The department’s Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program embodies this approach. Rather than offering upfront grants, it reimburses companies like Zap Energy and Commonwealth Fusion Systems only after they meet agreed-upon technical milestones. This model de-risks private capital while ensuring taxpayer funds are directly tied to verifiable progress. Companies also benefit, reporting that linking these milestones to their R&D roadmaps has made it easier to attract private investment. This echoes the success of the NASA–SpaceX partnership model that redefined U.S. space leadership.

Beyond funding, the DOE is investing in shared infrastructure including test facilities, materials platforms, and AI-driven simulation tools to lower barriers to progress while ensuring safety standards are upheld, allowing fusion startups to innovate faster. True partnership, speakers emphasized, requires long-term government vision that extends beyond funding. With clear regulatory frameworks and coordinated workforce programs, paired with international collaboration, the U.S. can remain the global center of fusion innovation.

Fusion on the Global Stage

In one of the day’s most sobering sessions, “The Fusion Scoreboard: Assessing the U.S.-China Fusion Competition,” analysts warned that the global race to fusion is accelerating, and the U.S. must move urgently to maintain its edge. David Lin of SCSP noted that China has invested between $6.5–13 billion in fusion since 2023. It has constructed four major fusion centers visible from satellite imagery, all backed by state-led funding. China’s “scale and speed,” he said, represent a direct challenge to America’s innovation-based model.

While Beijing’s top-down approach enables rapid infrastructure expansion, Wright reaffirmed that the U.S. retains a competitive edge in other areas: “China has serious state investment, but what they don’t have is the commercial sector. We do. And that gives us a broader, faster path to discovery.”

Supply Chains and Workforce: America’s Competitive Edge

Several sessions emphasized that the future of fusion requires building a robust industrial ecosystem with domestic manufacturing, specialized supply chains, and talent development. Bob Mumgaard described fusion as “an apex predator of technology,” requiring everything from advanced nanomaterials to high-field magnets and complex construction capabilities. “You need suppliers who can build, compute that can model it, and the ability to construct massive projects. The U.S. has this ecosystem, and that’s what gives us the edge.”

Industry leaders like Helion Energy’s Jackie Siebens highlighted the challenge of supply chain readiness faced by businesses. “We had to build our own high-voltage capacitor manufacturing because no vendor could deliver the specifications we needed,” she said. This reality underscores why companies such as Peak Nano are investing now in U.S.-based advanced capacitor film production, anticipating fusion’s demand for power-dense, ultra-reliable energy storage systems.

Speakers agreed that the need to build a fusion supply goes beyond delivering more, cleaner energy. Doing so will help revitalize U.S. manufacturing and ensure material sovereignty as we reduce dependence on foreign-sourced critical components like semiconductors, lithium, and gallium. Many speakers endorsed expanding federal tools such as the 45x advanced manufacturing tax credit and DOE loan programs, and increasing interagency coordination to strengthen domestic production capacity.

A National Priority and a Call for Speed

Across every panel, urgency was the prevailing message. Fusion is now viewed as both an innovation race and a national security imperative. “If the U.S. invents the technology and then lets China scale and commercialize it,” warned RAND’s Jimmy Goodrich, “we lose not just a market, but our national security edge.” Speakers called for executive-level leadership, along with faster permitting, and at least $10 billion in new public investment to accelerate commercial readiness by 2028.

“The biggest risk,” one panelist said, “is not moving fast enough.” As Wright concluded, “Fusion is how we power our AI future. It’s how we power our economy, our security, and ultimately, our planet. But we have to make it happen. Fast.”

At Peak Nano, we share this sense of urgency. Our work designing nanoscale capacitor films for high-voltage applications is helping to build the backbone of fusion’s power systems. As the summit made clear, leadership in fusion energy and in the technologies that enable it will be earned by those who invest now, moving fast and collaborating to shape our energy future.