Okay, before you start using your AI detection tools, I want to provide a summary of the report from Perplexity. I have five key takeaways from the report (yes, I wrote these).
Enjoy the summary, download the report, and thank Andrew Holland, Caroline Anderson, the FIA team, and the vendors who made this report possible.
In 2025, the fusion energy industry sits at a pivotal moment. What was once a field confined to academic laboratories and governmental research programs is now rapidly evolving into a commercially driven, globally competitive energy sector. According to the 2025 Global Fusion Industry Report by the Fusion Industry Association (FIA), fusion no longer seems like a technology perpetually 20 years away—it is an energy solution actively being engineered, tested, and piloted for commercialization in this decade.
The report, a result of collaboration from 53 companies across more than a dozen countries, provides a comprehensive view of the investments, breakthroughs, timelines, and challenges shaping this emerging industry. This global collaboration is a testament to the shared goal of delivering clean, safe, and virtually limitless electricity powered by nuclear fusion, making you a part of a larger movement.
One of the most striking indicators of the industry’s maturation is the rapid escalation in funding. In 2021, private fusion companies reported a total of $1.9 billion in investments. By 2025, that figure has grown more than fivefold to $9.7 billion, with over $2.6 billion raised in the last year alone. The majority—roughly $8.9 billion—comes from private sources, but public funding has also increased, up 84% from the previous year to nearly $800 million1.
Governments across the globe—including the U.S., Japan, Germany, China, the U.K., and the EU—are not just watching from the sidelines. They are actively creating policy and entering into Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) that share risk and accelerate commercialization. From DOE’s milestone-based fusion programs in the U.S. to siting support in Germany and the U.K., collaboration is increasing in both scale and frequency.
Parallel to funding, the company count and workforce have also expanded significantly, more than doubling in company number and quadrupling in headcount since 2021. The sector now directly employs over 4,600 people, and its broader supply chain supports at least 9,300 jobs, with projections reaching 18,200 employees when pilot plants are fully operational.
While electricity generation remains the primary mission of nearly every fusion company surveyed, the emergence of secondary applications, such as industrial heat, off-grid energy, space propulsion, and medical isotopes, is a testament to the diverse and exciting potential of fusion energy. This should leave you feeling excited about the myriad ways fusion can revolutionize various industries.
Perhaps the most tangible sign of commercial viability is the emergence of Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs). In 2023, Helion Energy signed a landmark PPA with Microsoft for at least 50 MWe, with a similar agreement following with Nucor, the U.S.’s largest steel manufacturer. More recently, Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS)—the most heavily funded company at $2 billion+—signed a PPA with Google and announced its first plant near Richmond, Virginia, in collaboration with Dominion Energy1.
Site selection for initial fusion plants is well underway:
Fusion "hubs" are emerging in regions such as California, the Pacific Northwest, and the U.K.’s Oxford corridor, driven by both public support and private initiatives.
Among the 53 companies surveyed, many are pushing the boundaries not just of physics but also of business models, partnerships, and R&D. Noteworthy players include:
The diversity of technical approaches is central to the industry's robustness. Magnetic confinement (tokamaks and stellarators) remains the dominant approach, used by 25 of the 53 companies, but laser inertial, magneto-inertial, hybrid electrostatic, and even muon-catalyzed fusion approaches are also being explored.
The industry is converging on the early 2030s as the decade of transformation. According to company forecasts:
These pilot plants will demonstrate not only net energy (high-Q) operation but also the cost-effectiveness, cycle durability, and operational uptime necessary to deploy full-scale commercial reactors.
Despite optimism, fusion developers face a dense thicket of hurdles:
Pre-2030 Challenges:
Post-2030 Concerns:
Fusion is attracting one of the most diverse sets of investors in the energy industry. On top of deep tech VCs like Breakthrough Energy Ventures and DCVC, the investor pool includes:
This reflects a growing belief that fusion is not only technically viable but inevitable, and its applications will go far beyond traditional power grids.
Beyond power generation, fusion R&D is giving rise to high-tech spinoffs. Advances in superconducting magnets, lasers, materials science, and plasma diagnostics are creating cross-sector opportunities in:
This mirrors the innovation halo seen in the space race, where even failed moonshot efforts yielded valuable components, materials, and software.
The fusion sector is in transition from bold ambition to substantive deployment. More than $77 billion would be needed (in aggregate) to commercialize all participating firms’ first plants fully, highlighting the scale of capital intensity and the importance of strategic consolidation.
Not every company will survive. However, just as in aviation or the semiconductor industry, a few leaders will emerge, and their success will ripple across economies and international energy markets.
Most importantly, fusion’s arrival coincides with mounting pressure to decarbonize, electrify infrastructure, and secure baseload energy in a shifting geopolitical climate. With projected outputs ranging from 5 kWe to 1.5 GWe per plant, fusion is being engineered to serve both remote microgrids and national grids.
The 2025 fusion industry is, above all, a global one. Developers are headquartered in North America, Europe, Asia, and Oceania. The U.S. and U.K. remain performance leaders, but China, Germany, Japan, and Canada are quickly gaining ground, offering sites, funding, and authority alignment to draw innovation within their borders.