Cooling our cryogenic system down to its very low operating temperature of 8 kelvin is a big moment for our SPARC fusion demonstration machine. It shows how deeply we’re now into the work of building, commissioning, and running the industrial hardware needed to operate SPARC. We’re steadily checking the check boxes on the SPARC to-do list. Fusion works by heating and confining a very energetic cloud of charged particles called a plasma. In our case, we do that with very strong magnets that must be cooled to very low temperatures. The plasma is exotic, but the cooling system is ordinary technology you’ll see at liquified natural gas plants and other industrial sites. But it takes skill and expertise to run cryogenics, and that’s what we’ve shown with this 8 kelvin achievement. We’ve already begun applying this knowledge to designing a very similar cryogenic system for our ARC power plant. Check out our video and blog post to learn more about this core technology and how CFS is working in parallel on both the core SPARC equipment at the heart of the facility and the support equipment like the cryo system surrounding it. Congrats to the team that put in long hours to install all the cryogenic system’s pumps, compressors, pipes, and valves and get it working smoothly. This gets us ready to check off one of the big check boxes on SPARC’s path to Q>1, aka net fusion energy.
To create a region with the hottest temperature in the solar system, we also have to create another nearby that’s just about its coldest. For our SPARC fusion machine, that cooling job falls to its cryogenic system — a system that recently reached a major achievement of operating at a very cold 8 kelvin (–445°F or –265°C) temperature. This cryogenics achievement is a big deal. The system applies well understood cooling technology to the cutting-edge new job of fusion energy. SPARC uses superconducting magnets to confine and control a superhot cloud of charged particles called a plasma, enabling those particles to fuse together and release energy. To perform well, our magnets must be cooled as low as 8 K to carry enormous electrical currents with no resistance. Bringing the full cryogenic system to 8 K is an example of our shift toward operations at SPARC. We’re testing and commissioning the support systems that surround the heart of the facility in anticipation of a major integrated test called dry dress rehearsal (DDR) that will put the SPARC support equipment through its paces. That allows us to exercise the equipment before we’ve completed assembly of the SPARC tokamak itself — the hardware with the magnets and vacuum vessel where the fusion will occur. SPARC won’t generate electricity, but its successor, the ARC power plant, will. The ARC cryogenics system will be similar to SPARC’s, though it’ll have to handle the power plant’s continuous operations. That means what we learn on SPARC will apply directly to our work on the ARC plant. For more details, check the link in the comments for our blog post on the SPARC cryogenic system. #FusionEnergy
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Even though fusion is hard, we’re really confident SPARC will hit its first big goal of Q>1. That milestone means that the amount of fusion energy we get out of the plasma (our very hot fusion fuel) will exceed the heating energy we put in to make the fusion happen. So far, only one machine in the world has done that, but we expect SPARC will be the second. Check our blog post about this to understand why we’re confident and why achieving Q>1 is important. To reach Q>1, you don’t just need good science. You also need a team with the skills to engineer, manufacture, build, and operate a fusion machine. @CFS_energy has exactly that. And we put this all together with commercialization in mind: SPARC demonstrates most of the core technology we need for our ARC power plant.
At CFS, we’re very confident that our SPARC tokamak will generate net fusion energy, a crucial performance threshold also called Q>1. Q is the ratio of fusion power coming out of the heart of a fusion machine to the heating power that’s pumped in to make fusion occur. Achieving Q>1 shows a fusion plasma is generating a surplus of power, and that’s the foundation for a power plant — the electricity source CFS expects to bring to the power grid in the early 2030s. Fusion is hard, but we have the design, the resources, and the team to make fusion power real. Our conviction that Q>1 is comfortably within reach begins with our 1,000+ person team of physicists, engineers, fabricators, and operators who’ve learned from decades of experience building and running tokamaks. Next is SPARC’s cutting-edge design, which is designed to reach performance well over Q>1. “We have some margin to achieve Q>1. We’re not sitting right at the threshold, hoping the stars align perfectly,” said Phil Snyder, Vice President of Plasma Physics. “SPARC is designed to reach Q>10, so Q>1 is not an extremely difficult milestone.” Only one machine so far, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, has achieved Q>1 so far. To read about why CFS fully expects SPARC will be the next to reach this enormously important milestone, check our blog detailing our fusion approach.
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Dennis Whyte (@MIT_Fusion) is taking over as CEO of the UK Atomic Energy Authority (@UKAEAofficial), and I’m excited to see a longtime friend and collaborator in this new leadership role. I worked for years with Dennis at @MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center — where Dennis was Director, I was a grad student getting my PhD, and @CFS_energy has its origins — and now I look forward to his arrival in the UK. CFS has had a joint R&D partnership with UKAEA for four years, including efforts like the LIBRTI program for fusion fuel production. Dennis is a giant in the fusion world, an author on nearly 400 peer-reviewed papers including several involving the SPARC fusion machine we’re building right now at CFS headquarters. The UKAEA is lucky to have him. Dennis helped build and maintain a strong PSFC program, and now he’ll have a chance to do the same for UKAEA. His taking this job shows how a well coordinated effort with a strong vision, significant financial and government support, and leading-edge new facilities can attract top talent. Bringing his skill to UKAEA directly strengthens the country’s ability to benefit from fusion energy’s advantages — clean, safe, dispatchable electricity. One of UKAEA’s most important fusion projects, the Joint European Torus (JET) tokamak, produced important research and operational expertise. It’s also the tokamak that came closest to producing net fusion energy (Q>1), with a Q of 0.67. JET has entered decommissioning now, but there’s more work to be done in fusion. I’m looking forward to seeing how Dennis can help UKAEA push fusion forward now that the world’s attention is focusing not just on experimental projects but commercial fusion technology, supply chains, and the first power plants heading toward the grid. #FusionEnergy
BREAKING NEWS: Professor Dennis Whyte has been appointed as the new Chief Executive Officer of UKAEA Group. For the Press Release, visit gov.uk/government/news/fusio…
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News today: Commonwealth Fusion Systems has raised an additional $1 billion — the largest amount since our $1.8 billion investment in 2021. That brings our total capital raise since the start of the company to $4 billion — about 30% of what all fusion companies have raised together, according to the latest @Fusion_Industry Association figures. This new funding cements our position as the global leader in fusion, a maturing company that’s able to attract a maturing investor set: pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, infrastructure investors, and industrial corporate partners. The reason we’re able to win their confidence is they see the full range of what we do. There’s the bedrock of our science. There’s our execution ability, evident when they come to Devens, Massachusetts, and see our SPARC fusion demonstration machine is now about 80% done. And there’s our progress in delivering our first ARC power plant, including our application to PJM Interconnection, the largest wholesale electricity market in the United States. This new funding puts us in a position to move at scale and as quickly as we need to deliver fusion energy. We’ll be able to apply what we’ve already learned from SPARC, to build at-scale prototypes of other technology we need, retool our supply chain, expand our manufacturing, prepare the site for our first ARC power plant, and start contracting power for the next plants. It’s like we’re standing on two feet, shifting our weight gradually from the SPARC foot to the ARC foot. That’s very exciting: once we turn on SPARC, we’ll be able to take off on the next step to ARC.
Today, CFS announced another major advance in our fusion energy push: we raised an additional $1 billion in funding. This is the largest investment round in commercial fusion worldwide since our $1.8 billion funding round in 2021, bringing our total capital raised to $4 billion. This investment reflects growing confidence from new partners in our technical progress, our team, and our commercialization path. It comes at a time when it’s clear the world needs a new energy option that provides safe, clean, and firm electricity. “CFS is making what once was impossible into inevitable,” said CFS CEO and Co-founder @BobMumgaard. “In the 2030s, we will put commercial fusion on the grid. We have the science that works and the proven execution that’s consistently validated by the market. We regularly welcome investors from around the world to our headquarters in Devens, Massachusetts, where they see real and tangible progress as we ready support systems and finalize the assembly of SPARC. In unlocking commercial fusion energy, we’re on a path to make an impact at a civilizational level.” CFS will use the funds raised to further accelerate our commercialization progress. In parallel to completing the assembly of our SPARC fusion demonstration machine, we’ll continue to develop the world’s first grid-scale fusion power plant, called ARC, at our Fall Line Fusion Power Station in Chesterfield County, Virginia. #FusionEnergy
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At Commonwealth Fusion Systems, we value those with proven experience that applies to our fusion energy mission — which is why I’m happy to welcome Lorence Kim as our new Chief Financial Officer. In that role, he’ll be able to apply to CFS his experience maturing a mission-driven, game-changing company from its deep science roots to commercialization. Lorence has deep experience with strategic advisory work, capital markets, fundraising and venture investing, having led the biotech investment banking effort at Goldman Sachs and co-founded Ascenta Capital. But importantly, he also was CFO for @moderna_tx for six pivotal years of hypergrowth as the company developed its mRNA platform and portfolio of medicines, including its COVID-19 vaccine. His strong financial leadership will help CFS complete the assembly of our SPARC fusion demonstration machine, design our first ARC power plant and plug it into the grid, and eventually scale up to build many fusion power plants around the world. #FusionEnergy
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This @eni–@UKAEAofficial work is a healthy sign of where things are headed in commercial fusion: integrated systems that fusion companies can buy as a unit instead of doing the work themselves to find, validate, and connect components. This is a sign of a maturing industry and strengthening supply chain.
#Rh3ova, the joint venture launched with @UKAEAofficial, brings together scientific expertise and industrial capabilities to support the growing global #fusion industry, with a focus on one of its critical challenges: the fuel cycle. bit.ly/4vdfSAF
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Fusion energy has plenty of challenges, but the first is always plasma physics. You have to control superhot fusion fuel in a way that’s agreeable to the laws of the universe. Today, in a set of five peer-reviewed papers, we’re documenting how we’re confident we’ll be able to do that with our ARC fusion power plant. The papers, written by 58 experts from CFS and collaborating universities and research institutions, show the scientific foundation. That starts with calculations and simulations backing up our expectation that an ARC plant will produce 1.1 gigawatts of fusion power that we can convert into 400 megawatts of net electricity for the grid. And the papers address how we’ll tackle fusion challenges like heat exhaust, disruptions, and plasma stability. The bottom line: The science is solid. There are no showstoppers. We begin with decades of tokamak knowledge, extend that with what we’ve learned already from our SPARC demonstration machine, and fine-tune it with what we’ll learn from operating SPARC. Our commercial success is contingent on this successful de-risking of the core science. We published these papers in the Journal of Plasma Physics through the peer-review process. That brings the independent validation of our work that’s crucial to establishing trust in our results. There’s a reason why peer review is the gold standard in the scientific community: It’s the best way to distinguish ideas from reality. In fusion, where the science and engineering are tough, peer-reviewed research helps leaders, investors, customers, and citizens make informed and unbiased decisions about who to trust and where to invest their dollars. Congratulations to all who contributed to these papers, and thank you to the Journal of Plasma Physics from @CambridgeUP for taking on their publication. Today the global fusion community can celebrate a new win in the advancement of the last energy source humanity will ever need.
Today, we laid the physics foundation for our ARC fusion power plant. ⚛️ With 5 deeply researched papers — validated by independent peer review and published in the Journal of Plasma Physics — we’ve shown we've nailed the scientific basics of producing copious amounts of fusion power. The collective assessment from our 58 co-authors? This machine will work. No scientific breakthroughs are required to bring this clean, secure, abundant source of energy to the grid. Here is how we're handling fusion's biggest challenges: ⚡ Powering the Grid: Using extremely strong magnets, ARC will confine the plasma long enough to generate 1.1 GW of fusion power. We'll convert that into 400 MW of continuous net electricity — enough to power ~280,000 average American homes. 🛡️ Handling Heat Exhaust: To control a superhot, unruly cloud of charged particles, we're utilizing proven methods to safely handle the heat exhaust that acts as a key practical constraint for tokamaks. ✅ Managing Disruptions: We aren't trying to build an operationally perfect machine. We are pragmatically designing ARC to safely handle disruptions and keep the plasma stable for top performance. 🏗️ Proving the Approach: We're building on decades of tokamak research and supercomputer simulations. And we're proving our approach right now with SPARC, the tokamak we are actively building in Massachusetts. With our transparency, you don’t have to take our assertions on faith. We are really pushing fusion forward.
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Happy to see this new $250 million fund from @gigascale Capital designed to let institutional investors become more deeply involved in the startups that’ll build the world’s future infrastructure and other physical technology. This is literally a constructive step forward. Very few people have successfully scaled cutting-edge technology and delivered it to the world. Even fewer can go deep on the novel physics, the operational work, and the people at the same time. @schrep and his team do all of it, and their expertise shines through.
1/ Today we're announcing Gigascale Capital's $250M first institutional fund to back early-stage founders rebuilding the physical economy.
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"[This is] the first time [we've had] energy technology that's gone all the way from Newton's laws on some of the biggest scientific compute all the way to a real-time control system and...digital representation of a plant." On stage at CERAWeek 2026 discussing how to scale new technologies to meet AI demand, CFS CEO and Co-founder @BobMumgaard sat alongside Lucia Tian and Marc Spieler, two of our close working partners at Google and NVIDIA, to discuss how AI and fusion energy benefit each other. The AI software that we use at CFS, powered in part by technology available through our partnerships with @nvidia, @Google and @Siemens, holds the potential to accelerate how we build, test, and operate the SPARC tokamak and its various support systems. And the fusion power plants we'll build will eventually power the very same AI systems that have supported their construction. #FusionEnergy #AI
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I’m grateful for the opportunity to serve on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). The United States has long been an innovation powerhouse, helping to tackle some of the world’s most pressing challenges. I look forward to working with other members of the PCAST to ensure the US remains at the forefront of innovation. whitehouse.gov/articles/2026…
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Pacific Fusion just called for commercial fusion energy companies to share their progress achieving specific milestones leading toward competitively priced power on the grid. Their effort is closely related to an open letter I wrote in 2024 (cfs.energy/news-and-media/bu…) and has the same goals in mind. Specifically, companies should build trust in the fusion industry by demonstrating their progress, and they can ensure credibility through peer-reviewed research that lets investors, press, and policymakers independently assess that progress. Importantly, Pacific Fusion shows their approach, exactly what they’ll measure, and how they’ll report as they click off the milestones. pacificfusion.com/updates/cl…
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The six milestones I’ve detailed frame our long-term direction at @CFS_energy. Expanding on the original open letter, I’m detailing those milestones in a series of blog posts. You can check out the posts on our six milestones below. 1. Produce stable plasma, the superhot fuel for the fusion process: blog.cfs.energy/first-step-o… The techniques Pacific Fusion uses does this already at university and national labs. 2. Heat the plasma to 10,000,000° Celsius: blog.cfs.energy/fusion-energ… Pacific Fusion’s technology does this at universities and national labs. 3. Show plasma performance through a high “triple product” measurement: blog.cfs.energy/fusion-energ… A closely related technology has done this at @SandiaLabsUVM, but it’s not entirely clear if Pacific Fusion has. 4. Achieve net fusion energy, a threshold called Q>1: blog.cfs.energy/fourth-step-… Pacific Fusion hasn’t built a machine to do this yet, but they lay out a plan to do so. 5. Operate a plant that produces net electricity: blog.cfs.energy/fifth-step-o… This requires handling factors like inefficiencies in power generation. Nobody has done this yet. 6. The sixth and last milestone is supplying competitive power on the grid. Nobody has done this yet, either. It’ll be the subject of my final blog post in the series, though. Stay tuned.
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In 2024, I introduced a six-milestone framework that the fusion energy industry can use to build trust in fusion energy. This week, we’ve published two blog posts detailing milestones 4 and 5. These are about making the leap from plasma physics into the larger world of fusion power plants. Milestone 4 is a doozy: Q>1, also called net fusion energy. Put simply, it means more energy out of the heart of the machine than in — and so far only one system in the world has been able to do it. This monumental achievement demonstrates the basis of a power plant, so you’ll hear a lot more about Q>1 as the fusion industry matures. Even if you’ve heard of Q>1 before, this post is a chance to read about some of its subtleties. Milestone 5 goes a step further by showing you can generate net electricity suitable for the power grid. That extends beyond the plasma physics skills needed for Q>1 into new domains like plant engineering and energy conversion. Of course you only need this if you have a fusion plasma that can make enough fusion power to overcome its own losses — hence the sequencing of the milestones. I know fusion science and engineering can be confusing, but these milestones are designed to offer a relatively simple guide that investors, journalists, policymakers, and the general public can use to evaluate fusion companies. Ultimately, being able to separate the true progress from shallow marketing hype will build trust in our industry. Check here for posts on milestone 4 and milestone 5 on the path to competitive fusion energy. Milestone 4: blog.cfs.energy/fourth-step-… Milestone 5: blog.cfs.energy/fifth-step-o… #FusionEnergy
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Hello from the World Economic Forum in @Davos, Switzerland. I’m here to be a part of all the discussions about energy, and I’m not alone — those conversations are really accelerating as people focus on how energy enables growth and especially technologies like AI. For @CFS_energy, we’ve got a bigger presence here at Davos this year for the role fusion energy plays in those conversations. Fusion is at the intersection of technology and energy. Last year, that led to new partnerships and progress at CFS, and I’m excited to see how everyone will benefit from that connection in 2026. #WEF26 #FusionEnergy #Davos26
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Great to see the Milestone program at work with @TheaEnergy's fusion power plant work here. Getting eyes onto designs can validate that assumptions are realistic and that projections use the best tools. Plus it can help find hidden upsides! This can give investors and stakeholders confidence, sharpen the team's understanding, and identify areas where help would accelerate things. A good example of public-private partnerships at work.
.@ENERGY certified our “Helios” preconceptual design after a detailed review confirming its feasibility to put energy on the grid. Thea Energy is the first awardee in the Milestone-Based program to complete its design review for a #fusion pilot plant. PR: thea.energy/press-release/u-…
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There are a lot of reasons to like fusion energy — it’s clean, safe, steady, and secure — but one of the big ones is that it can help meet soaring demand for energy around the world. New AI infrastructure is accelerating that demand. But just like fusion can help AI with electricity, AI also can help fusion, advancing our work to design, operate, and commercialize this technology. In this piece, @ericschmidt, chairman of Bolt Data & Energy and chair of the @scsp_ai, and I write about the implications of these big energy bets on the future of national competitiveness, energy security, and economic growth: weforum.org/stories/2026/01/… AI may be transforming how we think, create, and compete, but energy is what determines how fast and far this transformation can go. I look forward to attending the World Economic Forum Annual Davos Meeting next week to discuss these themes. #WEF26 #FusionEnergy
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Bob Mumgaard retweeted
We’re powering the industrial AI revolution. At #CES2026, CEO Roland Busch - joined onstage by @Microsoft, @nvidia, @PepsiCo & @CFS_energy - shared how we’re bringing AI into the real world at speed and at scale.
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“This deal brings deserved attention to fusion energy and its enormous potential to satisfy the world’s surging demand for electricity. The investor pool is widening as fusion grows beyond its early days. It’s the same phenomenon we saw with NVIDIA, Google, global banks, and sovereign wealth funds joining our most recent $863 million investment round to bring our total funding to nearly $3 billion so we can bring our power plant to the power grid by the early 2030s. Capital invested now can mean an enormous improvement for the world’s long-term energy supply. We’re looking forward to learning more details as the deal develops.” –Commonwealth Fusion Systems CEO and Co-founder @BobMumgaard #FusionEnergy foxbusiness.com/politics/tru…
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It's an extremely sad day in fusion today with the death of MIT’s Nuno Loureiro. The big machines, extreme conditions, geostrategy, funding, or beautifying physics often take center stage. This is unfortunate because it is the PEOPLE who make progress happen. In fusion it's a small group of them, and any one of them makes a huge difference. We lost one of the best ones today. Nuno was an insightful physicist, a far-seeing leader, a mentor, and most of all a great person to sit down with and talk about anything hard and nuanced and important and impactful. I and many others will miss this. My heart goes out to his family and colleagues across the many areas he made a difference. news.mit.edu/2025/nuno-loure…
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