The first “nuclear fusion” company to go public: the “General Fusion Company” backed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos

The fusion energy sector is seeing a historic moment.

This past Friday, General Fusion completed its SPAC merger with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp III, with an enterprise valuation of $724 million, a financing size of up to $338 million, and it will officially list on Nasdaq next Monday.

The Canadian company has been backed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who took part in multiple rounds of funding for the company over the past 15 years.

In an interview with the UK’s Financial Times, CEO Greg Twinney said, companies that are first to enter the public markets often can "dominate the narrative," shaping investors’ expectations for commercializing fusion energy businesses.

He also noted that, as there are currently no publicly listed peer competitors, the company will be able to tap into a "larger" pool of investors. "Only one— that’s us."

However, on the eve of its listing, a recent scientific paper published by the company has triggered a new round of doubts from the outside about whether its technical route can be advanced toward commercialization. Multiple market participants have also questioned the company’s motivations for listing at this time rather than continuing to seek private funding.

A distinctive "steampunk" technical route

Unlike most fusion startups that adopt the tokamak design, General Fusion has chosen a completely different technical path.

Tokamak fusion is a ring-shaped device that enables controlled fusion through magnetic confinement. Its main structure includes superconducting vertical-field coils, poloidal-field coils, and a double-layer vacuum chamber, and uses helical magnetic fields to confine high-temperature plasma to drive fusion reactions.

General Fusion, meanwhile, uses liquid-metal chambers driven to rapidly compress by mechanical pistons, compressing magnetized plasma.

Consulting firm Future Tech Partners advisor and former Chief Technology Officer at Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Dan Brunner, described this approach as "steampunk" and believes that compared with the tokamak route—already more mature—this path has greater uncertainty.

General Fusion is currently testing its Lawson Machine 26 prototype in Vancouver to validate its economic viability, and plans to build an operational commercial fusion power plant in the mid-2030s.

Technical progress is questioned by authorities

Brunner delivered a harsh assessment of the company’s latest research output.

He said that the company’s newest results are "light years away" from the targets needed to build a commercially viable device, and he bluntly said the company’s commercialization timeline is "hard to believe."

Specifically, Brunner pointed out that the paper shows the company’s plasma compression failed to raise ion temperatures to a sufficiently high level, meaning energy is still being lost through thermal leakage—one of the core challenges to achieving commercial fusion power generation.

In response, Tony Donné, chairman of General Fusion’s technical advisory committee and former CEO of the EU’s fusion research organization EUROfusion, offered a different view.

He believes that low ion temperatures are not an inherent flaw in the prototype’s design itself, but rather the result of the paper being published too early. He said the company has been under "pressure" due to the need to disclose progress before listing, leading to the early publication of the result. Donné said the temperature issue is already "under investigation" and expects subsequent test results to improve.

General Fusion said it remains confident in its development trajectory.

Fusion competition intensifies

General Fusion’s listing has not been smooth.

General Fusion announced layoffs of a quarter in 2025 due to a shortage of funding, although CEO Greg Twinney said that after the next round of investment arrives, most employees have been rehired.

Multiple investors, executives, and market observers have questioned the company’s decision to list, suggesting that part of the reason is that private financing channels have become increasingly difficult.

In response, Twinney argued that the company intends to avoid "raising tens of billions of dollars to build large scientific facilities," and instead pursue a more capital-efficient commercialization route. He emphasized:

Science milestones are only steps in the process, not the final goal.

General Fusion’s listing reflects an intensifying funding race across the entire fusion energy industry. Over the past five years, the number of private fusion companies has more than doubled. Competition in the sector keeps heating up, as each company scrambles for funding to build experimental facilities whose costs keep rising.

Fusion energy technology aims to simulate reactions in the interior of the sun, releasing energy by fusing atomic nuclei together in ultra-high-temperature plasma. Unlike nuclear fission power, it is widely seen in the industry as a low-carbon, nearly limitless energy "holy grail."

However, private fusion companies have yet to prove that their systems can produce more energy than is required to sustain the plasma. The old industry saying that "fusion always has 20 years" has long circulated.

General Fusion’s listing is the latest attempt by the industry to break this curse and move toward commercial reality. Whether it will succeed will continue to be tested by the market.

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