Canada’s General Fusion announced today that it has agreed to go public by combining with an American special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).
Richmond, BC-based General Fusion aims to develop commercially viable fusion power. It plans to merge with Dallas-based Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. III (Spring Valley) in a deal that values General Fusion at $600 million USD prior to the transaction and could give it up to $335 million in fresh funding.
Greg Twinney,
“The expected results from this machine will change the game.”
General Fusion
General Fusion claims this transaction would make it the first publicly traded pure-play fusion company—meaning a company solely focused on fusion power.
“There is a global race happening in fusion, and we consider ourselves to be Canada’s horse in that race,” General Fusion CEO Greg Twinney said during an investor presentation this morning.
The two companies expect the transaction to close in mid-2026, pending regulatory and shareholder approval, upon which General Fusion will begin trading on the Nasdaq. With this transaction, General Fusion is following the same path as Canadian deep tech peer Xanadu, which struck a similar deal in November to go public on the Nasdaq and TSX in late Q1 or early Q2.
During its investor presentation, Spring Valley chair and CEO Chris Sorrells claimed that General Fusion is heading to market at a projected future equity value of $1 billion USD, which he called “a very attractive valuation compared to its peers.”
The $1-billion USD figure includes approximately $105 million from a committed private investment in public equity financed by undisclosed institutional investors, as well as up to $230 million in cash from Spring Valley’s trust capital. That $230 million is not guaranteed, as SPAC investors reserve the right to redeem their capital.
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Founded in 2002 by physicist and chief scientist Michel Laberge, General Fusion aims to develop a commercially viable approach to generating zero-carbon fusion power to help meet global clean energy needs. General Fusion claims that it is “one of only four private companies worldwide to have achieved and published meaningful peer-reviewed fusion results.”
This appears to mark General Fusion’s third fundraise after staving off a cash crunch in early 2025. Last May, General Fusion shed staff and scaled back its operations amid fundraising challenges. In August, its public plea for investment was answered when the company closed $30 million CAD, largely from existing backers, in a “pay-to-play” deal.
That capital allowed General Fusion to resume advancing its Lawson Machine 26 (LM26) program, through which it has been creating plasma and compressing it to fusion conditions in order to demonstrate the commercial viability of its tech.
In November, General Fusion closed another $51.5 million CAD in funding that reportedly came with the expectation that the now 117-person company would soon go public.
Speaking with investors on Thursday, Twinney argued that “there are major market tailwinds to capture,” and asserted that General Fusion has the tech, team, and partnerships required to capture them. He noted that this deal gives General Fusion the capital it needs for its next phase of commercialization and rewards shareholders.
The fusion race heats up
Nuclear fusion is the physical process that powers the sun and stars. As the world looks to meet growing energy demands and shift away from fossil fuels, there is a quest to harness it as a commercial energy source, because it offers the prospect of abundant, carbon-free power.
Many players from around the globe are participating in the global race for fusion, from national labs to academic institutions and private companies like General Fusion. As Twinney told BetaKit last May, “The long-term view is that the world will run on fusion in the future.”
Getting there has required a lot of time and money. Prior to this deal, General Fusion had secured more than $400 million USD (nearly $600 million CAD) in total funding from private investors and the federal and BC governments.
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As electricity costs surge around the world, the fusion race has been heating up. Last year, rivals like Germany’s Proxima Fusion, US-based Commonwealth Fusion Systems, and TAE Technologies each announced nine-figure USD deals.
In December, TAE revealed plans to create the first public fusion company by merging with US President Donald Trump’s Nasdaq-listed social media venture Trump Media & Technology Group in an all-stock transaction that values TAE at approximately $3 billion USD.
“The diesel engine of fusion”
General Fusion plans to use this capital to advance its patented Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) tech, which is based on more than two decades of research and development. It will fully fund General Fusion’s LM26 program, which is focused on demonstrating and de-risking the company’s MTF tech “in a commercially relevant way.”
MTF aims to achieve fusion in “a practical way” by avoiding superconducting magnets and high-powered lasers and enabling the use of existing materials like pneumatic pistons.
During Thursday’s investor presentation, General Fusion CSO Megan Wilson described MTF as “the diesel engine of fusion,” adding, “We’re essentially combining fuel injection and compression, but in the context of fusion.”
Last year, General Fusion took a major step towards its ultimate target by creating its first magnetized plasma in LM26, which is needed for its fusion reactions. The next major technical milestone General Fusion is targeting is demonstrating fusion at temperatures of 10 million degrees Celsius.
After that, General Fusion will focus on the 100-million-degree mark and “scientific breakeven conditions,” or the point where LM26 is capable of producing more energy than it consumes—something it hopes to be the first company in the world to achieve. “The expected results from this machine will change the game,” Twinney said.
General Fusion aims to complete its LM26 program by mid-2028 and begin operating a “first-of-a-kind” commercial power plant based on its MTF tech by 2035.
Feature image courtesy General Fusion.