General Fusion rings Nasdaq bell after 21% debut, first fusion stock

General Fusion Group Ltd. rang the Nasdaq opening bell Friday, capping a week in which the Vancouver-based fusion developer became the first publicly listed fusion energy company and saw its shares surge 21% in the first session.

"We are honored to ring the Nasdaq Opening Bell and mark this milestone for General Fusion, and to celebrate becoming the first publicly listed fusion company," Chief Executive Officer Greg Twinney said. "For more than 20 years, our team has worked towards bringing fusion energy, the power of the sun and stars, to Earth."

The company, which went public via a merger with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. III, entered the public markets with roughly US$150 million in cash. Its Lawson Machine 26 demonstration device has already heated plasma to approximately 8.4 million degrees Celsius, though the company targets 100 million degrees Celsius — the 10 keV threshold — by the end of 2028 as part of a series of technical milestones leading toward the Lawson criterion for net energy.

The listing opens a public-market window into a technology that has attracted billions in private capital from backers including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Shopify Chief Executive Tobias Lutke but has never before been available to retail and institutional investors on a major exchange. General Fusion does not expect to generate revenue for years and targets a first commercial plant around 2035, making the stock a long-duration bet on the clean-energy transition at a moment when artificial intelligence-driven electricity demand is straining grids worldwide.

The company's magnetized target fusion approach sets it apart from the two dominant paths in the fusion race. Rather than using enormous superconducting magnets, as in the international ITER project, or high-powered lasers, as at the U.S. National Ignition Facility, General Fusion injects magnetized plasma into a chamber lined with liquid metal and compresses it using synchronized mechanical pistons. The financial press has dubbed the design "steampunk" for its reliance on mechanical force rather than exotic materials.

The approach carries both promise and risk. By avoiding rare specialty materials and the most expensive components, General Fusion aims for a more practical and cost-effective path to a commercial power plant. Skeptics counter that the mechanical compression method remains unproven at the scale required for net energy production. The company has been candid about the road ahead, stating it must clear significant scientific and financing hurdles before turning on a first-of-a-kind plant.

The debut comes as surging electricity demand from artificial intelligence data centers has reshaped the energy market. NVIDIA Corp.'s AI accelerators fill the data centers whose power needs have strained electricity grids, while GE Vernova has reported its gas-turbine supply is effectively sold out through 2030 on data-center-driven orders. Vertiv Holdings, which supplies power and cooling infrastructure for data centers, has reported a backlog measured in the tens of billions of dollars. Bloom Energy Corp., whose on-site fuel cells generate electricity at the point of use, has been one of 2026's standout gainers on surging data-center demand.

General Fusion shares, trading under the ticker GFUZ, touched intraday gains of about 30% on their first day before closing up 21%. The company was ranked first on TIME's list of the World's Top GreenTech Companies of 2026. Its management has said the roughly US$150 million in cash should fund the Lawson program through several key technical milestones by the end of 2028.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.