Civil • Commercial • Fusion

Fusion’s 2024 Wrapped

By Rachael Zisk
Share
Image: MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center

We’re still at least a handful of years from a working commercial fusion plant, but across the country and world, we’re getting closer every day. Fusion firms found success in fundraising, partnerships, and technological development this year in their quest to unlock the limitless power of the sun.

Here’s our roundup of the highlights.

Raising rounds: 2024 was a major year for fusion funding. In July, the FIA’s industry report showed that the fusion sector had raised more than $900M over the preceding year…and then Pacific Fusion went and doubled that number by emerging from stealth in October with a $900M funding round to pursue its pulsed magnetic approach to fusion.

Besides that, notable rounds included:

  • Tokamak Energy’s $125M round in November
  • Xcimer’s $100M Series A in June
  • Marvel Fusion’s €62.8M ($70.3M) Series B in September
  • Fuse Energy Technologies’ $32M round in September

Civil service: The US government isn’t the world leader in funding fusion projects, but it has launched a handful of programs to support fusion development. This year, that included Fusion Energy Strategy 2024, which allocated $180M to fund work supporting an eventual fusion plant.

Outside the US, the race for fusion is rolling along, as a handful of foreign governments announced new projects and batches of funding:

  • South Korea allocated $866M to fund fusion development on top of investments the nation has already made in the KSTAR and ITER experimental fusion projects. 
  • China invests tons into fusion research projects—-approximately $1.5B per year.

Policy projects: The US is prepping for fusion’s commercial potential, and that’s going to mean separate rules from those that govern fission plants. Along with the ADVANCE Act, this year Congress passed the Fusion Energy Act, which will keep the licensing process for the two technologies separate and consider fusion plants more akin to particle accelerators than fission reactors.

+ ICYMI: Read our roundup of the main events in the fission sector in 2024 here.

+ posts

Lead Reporter of Ignition

Share
Return Home
Related Stories
Commercial • Fusion

Google Goes for Fusion With CFS

Watch out, world—Big Tech is making another move toward fusion power, and this time, it’s buying future power output. Google has signed the first formal offtake agreement for fusion power in the US with Commonwealth Fusion Systems. The expanded partnership is twofold: The companies declined to share financial details on a press call, including the […]

Commercial

A Change in the Talen and Amazon Deal

Big Tech is checking every nook and cranny for energy that can fuel a rapid and massive expansion of data centers. Nuclear has become a major part of that hunt, to the benefit of both traditional and advanced nuclear providers. But while one of the biggest deals between a nuclear operator and a hyperscaler has […]

Fusion • VC/PE

Proxima Fusion Raises €130M Series A

A major fusion funding round just hit Europe.  Proxima Fusion has been working on developing a stellarator, a type of magnetic confinement fusion machine, for the last two years since it spun off from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP). Now, Proxima has raised a €130M ($151M) Series A round of funding to […]

Commercial

The IEA Tallies Energy Investment, and Nuclear Ranks High

Nuclear power is playing in the big leagues when it comes to attracting capital around the world. Each year, the International Energy Agency (IEA), an independent intergovernmental organization formed by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), counts up the dollars flowing into energy globally. This year, nuclear energy technologies are expected to pull […]