General Fusion is now a publicly traded company. The Richmond, British Columbia-based firm has completed its merger with SPAC Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. III and begun trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker GFUZ, with a pro forma market capitalization of approximately one billion dollars. It is the first company in the world focused exclusively on nuclear fusion to go public.
Spring Valley shareholders voted in favor of the deal on July 6, 2026. The transaction closed around July 10, with the SPAC simultaneously renamed General Fusion Group Ltd. The company now holds roughly 150 million dollars in cash. The bulk of that liquidity comes from a 107.7 million dollar PIPE — a private investment in public equity — that was oversubscribed. The SPAC trust contributed less than anticipated, as investors exercised their redemption rights at a high rate, a dynamic that is far from unusual in these types of transactions. General Fusion’s total funding since inception now exceeds 400 million dollars, with more than 100 million coming from government sources.
The technology General Fusion is betting on is called Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF). It uses neither superconducting magnets nor lasers. The underlying principle is mechanical compression: a liquid metal liner surrounds the plasma and compresses it until the temperatures and pressures needed to trigger a fusion reaction are achieved. The LM26 demonstration device, first operated in early 2025, has already reached plasma temperatures of approximately 8.4 million degrees Celsius. It is not designed to generate electricity — it serves as a precursor to a commercial-scale reactor, which the company aims to bring online by 2035. Key interim technical milestones are expected by 2028, under the company’s Lawson program.
Founded in 2002 by physicist Michel Laberge, General Fusion counts Jeff Bezos and Tobias Lütke, co-founder of Shopify, among its backers. The choice of a SPAC as the listing vehicle is consistent with the company’s profile: no operating revenue today, but a continuing need for capital to advance the technology. The SPAC route is faster than a traditional IPO and allows valuation to be negotiated directly, bypassing the book-building process. Markets responded positively to the debut. On the recognition front, the company ranks among the top firms in TIME’s World’s Top GreenTech Companies 2026 and has signed a framework agreement to explore potential fusion applications in Italy.
Going public brings a different kind of pressure than the venture capital world: quarterly reporting, analyst scrutiny, share price volatility. But it also brings visibility and access to a far broader investor base. If General Fusion meets the technical milestones it has set for itself, 2028 could be the year fusion stops being a promise and becomes a measurable reality. At that point, the listing will have served a clear purpose: turning market curiosity into fuel for the reactor.
