Pacific Fusion’s billion-dollar nuclear fusion project in Albuquerque has received the Urban Project of the Year 2026 award. The recognition, granted by New Mexico IDEA as part of its Economic Development Excellence Awards, goes to the City of Albuquerque Economic Development Department and the Albuquerque Regional Economic Alliance (AREA) for attracting and supporting the California-based startup’s expansion into New Mexico.
The campus will be built at Mesa del Sol, in Albuquerque’s southeastern district. The roughly 225,000-square-foot facility will house Pacific Fusion’s Demonstration System — the experimental platform through which the company aims to achieve what is known as net facility gain by 2030: a fusion reaction that produces more energy than is put into it. Until just a few years ago, the scientific community considered this milestone to be decades away.
The project is expected to create more than 200 permanent, high-wage jobs, along with hundreds of additional positions in construction and the local supply chain. To make it happen, Albuquerque City Council unanimously approved $776.6 million in industrial revenue bonds, giving Pacific Fusion a twenty-year tax exemption, plus $10 million in local economic development funds. This incentive package outcompeted rival bids from the California cities of Livermore and Alameda, both of which were vying to host the campus.
New Mexico IDEA selected Pacific Fusion specifically for the scale of the project: one billion dollars in private investment, the creation of skilled jobs, and the potential to establish Albuquerque as a national hub for fusion energy. Construction is already underway — the groundbreaking took place in August 2026 — with federal officials, representatives from the U.S. Department of Energy, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt in attendance. On that same occasion, Pacific Fusion announced a memorandum of understanding with the U.S. Department of Energy.
Albuquerque was not a random choice. The city has been home to Sandia National Laboratories for decades — one of the world’s leading centers for applied physics and energy research. Pacific Fusion, founded in 2023 and headquartered in California’s Bay Area, is built on the expertise cultivated in that environment. The company is backed by investors including Lowercarbon, Lightspeed, and UP.Partners, who are betting on a technology capable of delivering clean, emission-free energy at commercial scale.
If Pacific Fusion stays on schedule and achieves net facility gain by 2030, Albuquerque could become the place where nuclear fusion stops being a promise and becomes a reality. The award is simply the latest confirmation that this bet — at least in terms of investment and infrastructure — is already well underway.
