General Fusion Group Ltd. began trading on the Nasdaq on July 13, 2026, under the ticker GFUZ, becoming the first nuclear fusion company ever to list on a public stock exchange. Shares closed the opening session up 40% from the reference price of $12.85 — a clear sign that investor appetite was anything but lukewarm.
The listing was completed through a merger with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. III, a SPAC already traded on the Nasdaq. The deal closed on July 10, 2026, and three days later General Fusion’s shares made their official market debut. Founded in 2002 and headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, the company raised approximately $150 million in cash — combining proceeds from a private placement and trust capital — to fund the advancement of its fusion technology.
The cornerstone of General Fusion’s business plan is the Lawson Program, named after the physical criterion that defines the conditions required to achieve net energy from fusion: reaching a sufficient combination of plasma temperature, density, and confinement time. The company pursues this goal through MTF — Magnetized Target Fusion — a technology that combines magnetic confinement with rapid mechanical compression. The approach sidesteps superconductors and high-powered lasers, targeting machines built from industrially available materials that are, in principle, economically competitive.
The demonstration machine LM26, operational in Vancouver, is the proving ground for this technology. Designed, built, and commissioned in under two years, LM26 compresses plasma using a liquid lithium liner to a diameter equal to 50% of that envisioned for a commercial machine. At the time of listing, the machine had already recorded plasma electron temperatures of around 0.72 keV — roughly 8.4 million degrees Celsius — against an initial target of 1 keV, or 10 million degrees. The next milestones call for reaching 10 keV (100 million degrees) and ultimately satisfying the full Lawson criterion, a target General Fusion has set for 2028.
The stock market debut is more than a financial milestone. It marks the first time in history that nuclear fusion has stepped onto the public markets stage, sending a clear signal to institutional investors who, until now, could only access the sector through private funding rounds. General Fusion has already signed a framework agreement with Renexia for a potential commercial deployment in Italy, and in 2026 it earned a spot on TIME magazine’s list of the world’s top 100 GreenTech projects. Competition is closing in — TAE Technologies, backed by capital linked to the Trump administration, is also eyeing a public listing — but General Fusion got there first. If LM26 hits its targets on schedule, 2028 could be the year fusion finally stops being a promise renewed every decade.
