Germany pivots to nuclear fusion, partnering with Focused Energy and RWE. Breakthroughs at Lawrence Livermore bring commercial fusion closer to reality.

Let’s start with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility (NIF)—arguably the largest, most established fusion research facility in the world. This year, NIF continued firing its reactor, tweaking even the most minute details of its setup in hopes of the slightest improvement in energy yield efficiency.

A nuclear fusion breakthrough has always been 30-odd years away, but not anymore. The race for commercialization is on.

South Korea seeks to begin staging nuclear fusion power generation tests in 2030 at the earliest, nearly 20 years ahead of its original schedule, the government announced Friday, amid growing energy demand stemming from an artificial intelligence (AI) boom.

So far this year, per Crunchbase data, investors have poured close to $2 billion into an assortment of companies across stages working on nuclear power offerings outside of the fusion space. The funding influx coincides with public market offerings activity as well.