The world's first nuclear fusion IPO is coming.

In 2026, nuclear fusion will move from concept to IPO.

Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT), under former US President Donald Trump, recently announced that it has signed a definitive merger agreement with TAE Technologies, a US nuclear fusion energy company backed by Alphabet. The two parties will complete the merger through an all - stock transaction, with a total transaction value exceeding $6 billion.

Different from DJT, General Fusion, a Canadian nuclear fusion technology company, focuses almost all its business on nuclear fusion itself. On January 22nd, General Fusion announced that it had signed a definitive business combination agreement with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. III, a special purpose acquisition company. The overall valuation is approximately $1 billion. The transaction is expected to be completed in mid - 2026. If everything goes smoothly, the combined company will be listed on the NASDAQ, potentially becoming the world's first pure nuclear fusion energy company to enter the public capital market.

The core appeal of controllable nuclear fusion lies in its almost infinite energy potential. Based on the current global energy consumption level, nuclear fusion fuel is sufficient to support human use for hundreds of millions of years, making it one of the ultimate solutions to climate change and energy security issues.

Capital is rapidly flowing into this "ultimate energy" track. The "Global Fusion Industry Report 2025" shows that in the past five years, the total investment in the global nuclear fusion field has increased from $1.9 billion in 2021 to $9.7 billion. The number of relevant enterprises has reached 53, a 143% increase compared to 2023. In China, on January 12th this year, Star Ring Fusion Energy, a startup in the field of controllable nuclear fusion, announced the completion of a new round of financing worth 1 billion yuan, setting a new record for a single - round financing of private nuclear fusion enterprises.

While the enthusiasm is rising, the industry also remains vigilant. An industry insider pointed out that "in the past two years, the number of institutions paying attention to nuclear fusion has increased by hundreds of times, which easily reminds people of the semiconductor chip boom from 2015 to 2016." In his view, capital can move in and out quickly, but technology cannot advance by leaps and bounds. Compared with the clear "domestic substitution" path in the semiconductor industry, the underlying logic of current nuclear fusion investment still highly depends on a technological scenario based on the assumption that everything goes smoothly.

The World's First Listed Nuclear Fusion Company

To understand why General Fusion is emphasized as the world's first pure fusion listed company, we need to look back at the exploration path of human beings on nuclear fusion technology itself.

Among all current technology routes, the most widely - invested, closest - to - controllable - nuclear - fusion - conditions, and most mature solution globally is the Tokamak. The Tokamak is a device that achieves controlled nuclear fusion through magnetic confinement. Its name comes from a Russian acronym, corresponding to toroidal, vacuum chamber, magnet, and coil respectively. This device was first proposed in the 1950s by people such as Andrei Sakharov and Igor Tamm at the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, the Soviet Union.

Structurally, the Tokamak has a toroidal vacuum chamber in the center, surrounded by a complex coil system. After being energized, a strong helical magnetic field is generated inside the device, heating the plasma and stably confining it at extremely high temperatures, thus triggering a nuclear fusion reaction.

However, the costs of the Tokamak are also clear: continuous high - intensity investment, an extremely complex engineering system, and a long and uncertain commercialization cycle. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), commonly known as the "artificial sun" and the world's largest Tokamak nuclear fusion project, is a concentrated manifestation of this reality. It is understood that the ITER project was originally planned to invest $5 billion and be completed within 10 years, but it has already invested over 20 billion euros, and there is still no end in sight for the investment.

For this reason, the focus of the capital market in recent years has gradually shifted to technology routes that can be verified in stages and have potential commercial feasibility. Take the Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) technology adopted by General Fusion as an example. If nuclear fusion is compared to "squeezing a balloon filled with high - temperature gas," the Tokamak relies on a large and expensive superconducting magnet system to maintain plasma stability, while MTF uses a mechanical piston to instantaneously compress the plasma in a liquid lithium liner to achieve fusion conditions. Its most direct advantage is a significant reduction in system complexity and overall cost.

At the beginning of 2025, General Fusion announced that its world's first fusion demonstration device, the Lawson Machine 26 (abbreviated as "LM26"), had been designed, built, and put into operation in less than two years. LM26 is the first MTF demonstration device to reach a commercial scale. It uses a lithium - lined mechanical compression of the plasma, with a diameter 50% of the commercial scale, aiming to achieve key fusion technology milestones: heating to 1 keV (10 million degrees Celsius); heating to 10 keV (100 million degrees Celsius); and ultimately achieving the Lawson criterion, which is a combination of fusion parameters for generating net fusion energy in the plasma.

In this listing transaction, General Fusion also plans to use the funds obtained to advance the LM26 project, aiming to demonstrate and reduce the risks of MTF technology in a commercially meaningful way. According to the company's plan, General Fusion expects to achieve scientific break - even in 2026, that is, the net energy generated by the nuclear fusion reaction will reach or equal the input energy required to start the reaction for the first time.

Going Public through a Self - Created "Shell"

Another notable point is that General Fusion's listing plan this time did not choose the traditional IPO, but rather achieved it through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).

Simply put, a SPAC is also a form of back - door listing, but instead of looking for a "shell" in the market, it creates one itself. This "shell company" only has cash, no real business or assets, and will invest in and acquire the target company that wants to go public. If the acquisition is not completed within 24 months, the SPAC will face liquidation, and all the funds in the escrow account, along with interest, will be returned to the investors 100%.

The advantages of a SPAC are fast listing speed, high certainty, relatively low costs, and valuation flexibility. From a practical perspective, nuclear fusion is a typical technology track with high investment, long cycle, and low predictable cash flow, which is not naturally compatible with the traditional IPO pricing system centered on profitability and comparable companies. In the past year, the overall financing environment in the nuclear fusion industry has tightened. General Fusion has also faced financial pressure and once laid off at least 25% of its employees. It was not until it received an emergency financing of $22 million that the company temporarily stabilized its operations and began to re - evaluate a more certain capital path.

The company merging with General Fusion this time, Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. III, is a typical SPAC, also known as a "blank - check company." The platform behind it, Spring Valley, is an asset management company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, with multiple investment tools under its belt, aiming to acquire or merge with enterprises in the energy or decarbonization market.

It is led by Chris Sorrells, the chairman and CEO of Spring Valley. He has more than thirty years of experience in the energy and decarbonization fields as a partner of NGP Energy Technology Partners. In addition, Chris is also a major investor in the Renewable Energy Group, which was later acquired by Chevron for $3.15 billion, with a return rate of up to six times after the IPO.

In the past five years, the Spring Valley platform has raised $690 million through three initial public offerings (IPOs) and has raised or committed more than $450 million through completed or ongoing business combinations. In addition, the first business combination facilitated by the platform brought approximately $4 billion in liquidity to shareholders through public market transactions and secondary market transactions after the deal was completed.

In May 2022, Spring Valley I merged with NuScale Power, with an equity valuation of $2.2 billion. This marked an important milestone in the energy field and gave birth to the world's first listed company focused on small modular reactor (SMR) technology. In July 2025, Spring Valley II reached a definitive agreement to merge with Eagle Energy Metals Corp. at an equity valuation of $300 million. Eagle Energy Metals Corp. is a next - generation nuclear energy company with the mining rights to the largest recoverable, proven, and indicated uranium deposits in the United States, as well as proprietary small modular reactor (SMR) technology.

Assuming no redemptions, the proposed business combination between General Fusion and SVAC implies a pro - forma equity value of approximately $1 billion, including approximately $105 million from a committed and over - subscribed PIPE and $230 million in trust capital from SVAC. According to PitchBook data, General Fusion has previously raised more than $440 million and has received investments from individuals and companies such as Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, Tobi Lutke, the CEO of Shopify, and Temasek.

Intensive Capital Layout in Commercial Nuclear Fusion

Today, major global economies have regarded nuclear fusion as the next - generation strategic energy industry. It is understood that nearly 40 countries around the world are advancing fusion programs, and there are more than 160 fusion devices in operation, under construction, or in the planning stage.

In China, nuclear fusion is also included in the country's future industrial layout. The suggestions for the 15th Five - Year Plan clearly propose to prospectively layout future industries and promote hydrogen energy, nuclear fusion energy, etc. to become new economic growth points. Currently, the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), the Compact Fusion Energy Experiment (BEST), and the Core Systems of the Fusion Reactor (CRAFT) have formed a hierarchical layout. Among them, as China's next - generation "artificial sun," the BEST project plans to light up the "first lamp" of human fusion energy around 2030.

Top - tier technology capital is also continuously increasing its investment in this track. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, invested $9.5 million in Helion Energy as early as 2015 and added another $375 million in 2021. The company has signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) with Microsoft and set a more aggressive commercialization schedule. Bill Gates invested in Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), a spin - off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 2021 and another nuclear fusion company, Type One Energy, in 2024. Last year, CFS received investments from Nvidia and Google, and not long ago this year, Type One Energy also announced the completion of an $87 million Series B financing.

Domestic nuclear fusion financing has also significantly heated up. In July 2025, China Fusion, led by the China National Nuclear Corporation, introduced shareholders such as Kunlun Capital and Zhejiang Energy Electric Power, with a capital increase of nearly 11.5 billion yuan. Subsequently, companies such as Nova Fusion, Anton Fusion, and Beijing Critical Domain have successively completed angel - round or strategic financings, and the industrial chain is gradually taking shape.

Industry analysis points out that as the demand for stable and clean power in data centers explodes, many leading fusion companies are accelerating their transition from scientific research narratives to energy infrastructure narratives. 2026 may be a key year for them to enter the secondary market en masse.

Controllable nuclear fusion may be the most important race in human history. The United States, Japan, and Europe are all betting on this route, but the real test has not yet arrived. In the view of an industry insider, the thing that this industry needs to be most vigilant about is "rushing in all at once and then dispersing all at once." Otherwise, what will be gathered is not a complete industrial chain but a bubble of the industrial chain.

This article is from the WeChat official account "China Venture Capital", author: Wei Xianghui. Republished by 36Kr with permission.