The nuclear energy race led by start-ups

The race for nuclear fusion energy is becoming increasingly crowded, even though the nascent field remains many years, if not decades, away from the commercial stage. What is new is that fusion research, historically led by public sector scientists, is now predominantly populated by private operators, who are making the fastest progress.

In pole position is the American Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which is building the Sparc demonstration plant in Massachusetts, due to start up in 2027. The company, in which Eni is among the largest investors along with Google and Bill Gates, claims that it will be able to supply electricity to the grid as early as the early 2030s. Other start-ups with projects at an advanced stage are Helion, backed by Sam Altman, the British Tokamak Energy, the Canadian General Fusion, financed by Jeff Bezos, the German Proxima Fusion and the European Gauss Fusion alliance.

Gauss, founded in 2022 by a group of German, French, Italian and Spanish industrial partners (for Italia, Asg Superconductors of the Malacalza family), has just gone through a review of its conceptual design, which envisages a first operating plant by the mid-40s, with an investment of between 15 and 18 billion euros. Its programme is part of the German-Italian industrial collaboration, reaffirmed in the recent meeting between Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Chancellor Friedrich Merz. Proxima, for its part, has just recently obtained 400 million euros from Bavaria to build its first laboratory. The two start-ups - which are both based near Munich, not far from the headquarters of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, whose technology they use - are riding on the 'Fusion Action Plan' launched in 2025 by the federal government, with the commitment of over two billion euros in investments by 2029 to support the construction of Europe's first pilot plant.

Overall, according to the Fusion Industry Association, at least 53 private companies are targeting fusion energy worldwide, including 29 in the US, four in the UK, eight in the EU, three in China and three in Japan. These companies have so far raised almost $9 billion privately and another $795 million in public funding. Initial investments have largely come from the lords of the Net Economy such as Altman and Bezos, venture capital groups specialising in energy or oil companies such as Eni and Chevron. In recent years, generalist investors have also shown interest, but there are still no listed fusion companies and experts claim that billions of investments will be needed to make fusion energy a reality.

Considered the 'holy grail' of clean energy because it could theoretically provide virtually unlimited energy with zero carbon emissions, nuclear fusion is the reaction that powers the sun and consists of heating two isotopes of hydrogen - typically deuterium and tritium - to such extreme temperatures that the atomic nuclei fuse, releasing helium and large amounts of energy in the form of neutrons. Originally, it was a team of British scientists at Cambridge University who first fused deuterium and tritium in a particle accelerator in 1934. Then, in the 1950s, Soviet physicists developed the first fusion machine, called the tokamak, which used powerful magnets to hold the isotopes stationary while heating them to temperatures higher than the sun.