Fusion Companies Compared, October 2026: Helion, Commonwealth Fusion, TAE, General Fusion, Zap and More

There are now at least 17 private fusion companies that have each raised more than $100 million, according to a TechCrunch list published Aug. 15, 2026 that uses data from FusionX. They are not building the same machine. They are making different bets on how to confine or compress plasma, and they are on different clocks. This page compares eight of them, with the latest news we have covered.

Read this first. Funding totals are TechCrunch's figures from mid-August and have moved since. Every timeline below is a company target, not a result, and none of them has been independently demonstrated. We did not verify the figures against company filings.

The Companies Side by Side

Four Approaches in Plain Terms

• Tokamaks and stellarators (CFS, Tokamak Energy, Proxima) hold hot plasma in a ring using strong magnets. Tokamaks are the most studied design. Stellarators twist the magnet shape to hold plasma more steadily, at the cost of a more complex build. CFS and Tokamak Energy both rely on high-temperature superconducting magnets to make smaller machines.
• Pulsed field-reversed designs (Helion, TAE) form plasma in smaller bursts. Helion's machine collides plasmas and aims to recover electricity directly from the plasma's changing magnetic field.
• Inertial confinement (Pacific Fusion) compresses fuel very quickly with pulses of energy, in the family of the laser experiments at the National Ignition Facility.
• Magnetized target fusion (General Fusion) squeezes magnetized plasma mechanically. It is the least conventional of the group.

What Has Happened Recently

These are items we have covered or that appeared in the sources we used.

• Oct. 22, Commerce CHIPS letters of intent. Up to $175 million for Helion and up to $85 million for CFS, for fusion-related electronics. They are preliminary. See our report.
• Oct. 8, General Fusion and UKAEA. General Fusion's LM26 reached an electron temperature of 1.1 keV, about 12.6 million degrees Celsius, in a result that has not been peer reviewed. See our LM26 coverage. TechCrunch reports General Fusion listed on Nasdaq on July 13, 2026 through a reverse merger, netting $127 million.
• CFS and AI. The Department of Energy chose CFS to lead an AI-enabled digital twin of SPARC. See our report. As of April 2026, CFS described SPARC as about three-quarters built, per our fusion milestones guide.
• Helion's claims. Helion's announcement describes the first private-company demonstration of deuterium-tritium fusion with plasma at 150 million degrees Celsius. That is the company's description. Its Series G appears as $465 million in TechCrunch and $500 million in Helion's own announcement.
• Zap Energy. TechCrunch says Zap partially pivoted in April 2026 to add fission and explore a hybrid fusion-fission plant, and hired a new CEO.

How to Read the Table

This section is analysis, not reporting.

• Funding is not progress. The largest raises are at Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Helion, which have the earliest stated timelines. That reflects investor confidence, not a measured result.
• Timelines are the weakest column. General Fusion once hoped LM26 would reach breakeven in 2026, according to TechCrunch. Its current stated plant date is around 2035. Dates in this sector have slipped before, and any single date should be read as a target.
• Different milestones mean different things. "Net energy" in a physics experiment, "electricity" from a machine and a commercial power plant are three separate steps. A company saying it will hit one is not saying it will hit all three.
• Watch the customers. Offtake agreements with large buyers, such as Google and Eni for CFS and Microsoft for Helion, are signals that someone is willing to pay for power if it arrives.
• The government is becoming a funder. The CHIPS awards, DOE's AI digital twin program and U.K. support for Tokamak Energy's work show public money flowing to hardware as well as research.

What We Cannot Conclude

We cannot rank these companies by likelihood of success. Funding totals date from mid-August. TAE's merger status, Pacific Fusion's current funding and Proxima's latest round were not checked beyond TechCrunch's figures. We have not seen peer-reviewed results for most claims above. The list is not complete: TechCrunch counted nine more companies above $100 million, and many smaller developers are not covered here.

Why It Matters

• Fusion is a race with several different tracks. No single design is settled.
• Money is concentrated. Two companies account for roughly $7 billion of the funding in the table.
• Near-term milestones are about to be tested. CFS's 2027 target and Helion's 2028 target will show which timelines hold.
• Treat dates as targets. The history of the field argues for caution.