FACT SHEET: ARPA-E Announces $135 Million Commitment for Fusion Technology – The Largest Fusion Investment in the Agency’s History

Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy FACT SHEET: ARPA-E Announces $135 Million Commitment for Fusion Technology – The Largest Fusion Investment in the Agency’s History U.S Department of Energy (DOE) Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) April 8, 2026 Ensuring American Energy Dominance – Accelerating Fusion Breakthroughs for an Affordable, Reliable, Secure Energy Supply. San Diego, CA – Today, during his plenary remarks at the 2026 ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit, ARPA-E Director Conner Prochaska announced a $135 million commitment to further develop and commercialize fusion technologies. Deployed over the next 18 months, this will constitute the largest concentrated investment in fusion technology in the agency’s history. This investment accelerates momentum from a decade of ARPA-E’s stewardship of early-stage, high risk technologies across the fusion ecosystem. This investment affirms ARPA-E’s central role in catalyzing the fusion power industry, which barely existed a decade ago. • When ARPA-E entered the fusion space in 2014, the field was dominated by two large-scale approaches: magnetic confinement and inertial confinement. ARPA-E identified a white space–novel, lower-cost architectures and unconventional confinement concepts–and moved fast. • To date, ARPA-E has invested approximately $134 million in commercial fusion technologies. Such public investment has catalyzed more than $1.5 billion in private follow-on funding. • When ARPA-E first entered this technical space, there were 12 fusion companies. Today, there are more than 50 that are collectively backed by $10 billion in private investment. Many of these companies were spun out of ARPA-E funded projects and research. The New $135 Million Commitment: Faster, Cheaper, Ready to Scale The $135 million in newly pledged funding announced today, to be spread over multiple programs, significantly expands ARPA-E’s fusion portfolio, with investments directed at the toughest technical barriers to commercial fusion power. This funding supports the Trump