Investors Have Poured Nearly $10 Billion Into Fusion Power. Will Their Bet Pay Off?
Over the past five years, private-sector funding for fusion energy has exploded. The total invested is approaching $10 billion, from a combination of venture capital, deep-tech investors, energy corporations, and sovereign governments.
Most of the companies involved (and the cash) are in the United States, though activity is also increasing in China and Europe.
There are several drivers: increasing urgency for carbon-free power, advances in technology and understanding such as new materials and control methods using artificial intelligence (AI), a growing ecosystem of private-sector companies, and a wave of capital from tech billionaires. This comes on the back of demonstrated progress in theory and experiments in fusion science.
Some companies are now making aggressive claims to start supplying power commercially within a few years.
Can this be done in a decade? It won’t be easy. For comparison, design, siting, regulatory compliance, and construction of a 1-gigawatt coal-fired power station (a well-understood, mature, but undesirable technology) could take up to a decade. A 2018 Korean study indicated the construction alone of a 1-gigawatt coal-fired plant could take more than 5 years. Fusion is a much harder build.
Private and public-private partnership fusion energy projects with such ambitious timelines would have high returns—but a high risk of failure. Even if they don’t meet their lofty goals, these projects will still accelerate the development of fusion energy by integrating new technology and diversifying risk.
Many private companies will fail. This shouldn’t dissuade the public from supporting fusion. In the long term, we have good reasons to pursue fusion power—and to believe the technology can work.
https://singularityhub.com/2025/10/17/in...t-pay-off/
Over the past five years, private-sector funding for fusion energy has exploded. The total invested is approaching $10 billion, from a combination of venture capital, deep-tech investors, energy corporations, and sovereign governments.
Most of the companies involved (and the cash) are in the United States, though activity is also increasing in China and Europe.
There are several drivers: increasing urgency for carbon-free power, advances in technology and understanding such as new materials and control methods using artificial intelligence (AI), a growing ecosystem of private-sector companies, and a wave of capital from tech billionaires. This comes on the back of demonstrated progress in theory and experiments in fusion science.
Some companies are now making aggressive claims to start supplying power commercially within a few years.
Can this be done in a decade? It won’t be easy. For comparison, design, siting, regulatory compliance, and construction of a 1-gigawatt coal-fired power station (a well-understood, mature, but undesirable technology) could take up to a decade. A 2018 Korean study indicated the construction alone of a 1-gigawatt coal-fired plant could take more than 5 years. Fusion is a much harder build.
Private and public-private partnership fusion energy projects with such ambitious timelines would have high returns—but a high risk of failure. Even if they don’t meet their lofty goals, these projects will still accelerate the development of fusion energy by integrating new technology and diversifying risk.
Many private companies will fail. This shouldn’t dissuade the public from supporting fusion. In the long term, we have good reasons to pursue fusion power—and to believe the technology can work.
https://singularityhub.com/2025/10/17/in...t-pay-off/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
