Most people playing the stock market would agree that it’s a good idea to ensure the product a company provides actually exists before taking it public. That’s not the case for Vancouver’s General Fusion. CEO Greg Twinney is taking the company public, anyway, potentially as soon as next month.
Speaking with Axios national energy correspondent, Amy Harder, at Web Summit Vancouver on Thursday, Twinney told a full house that despite the long-running joke that “nuclear fusion is always 30 years away, and will remain that way,” he believes an operational nuclear fusion powerplant could be up and running by 2035.
This go public allows us to fully fund that machine and achieve industry-first milestones with that machine and from there, it’s a clearer path to get to first of a kind.”
Greg Twinney, General Fusion
General Fusion, which is developing nuclear fusion technology with the aim of creating commercially viable energy production, announced in early 2026 that the company would be going public on the NASDAQ. It would be the first such company solely focused on fusion power to do so.
That all sounds great on paper. But nuclear fusion, while proven in academic and government laboratories to be possible, doesn’t exist in a commercially applicable way. That means the company is opening itself up to the public as a pre-revenue company and, technically, without a finished product.
“There’s examples of pre-revenue companies [going public],” Twinney said. “It’s not typical … but it’s also not something that’s never been done.”
In fact, Twinney is optimistic that going public may actually be the solution to getting commercial nuclear fusion over the finish line by providing a much needed source of capital. Last year, the company announced layoffs and publicly stated it was short on money, telling BetaKit in May of 2025 that the company was looking for $125 million USD to fulfill its goals. Twinney released a letter outlining the company’s financial needs, seeing it as an opportunity to encourage partnership in the company and its mission.
“What pulled us through last year was that we have this machine built, and it’s going to achieve some incredible milestones and those milestones lead to a commercial powerplant, which means fusion gets on the grid. That’s like, the most compelling ‘why’ you could ever imagine.”
Twinney stopped short of calling the company’s decision to go public a lifeline, saying that the firm was able to raise private capital on the heels of Twinney’s public disclosure. He added that the company’s choice to go public via de-SPAC—a process where a privately held company merges with a shell company that is already public—had enabled General Fusion to secure $100 million of pipe capital upon de-SPAC’ing with partner Spring Valley Acquisition Corp.
When asked when the public could expect General Fusion to be listed, Twinney didn’t provide a hard date but said that there are plans to de-SPAC in mid 2026 “not far from now.”
“We announced to go public earlier this year via SPAC. We looked at all the different ways that you can go public … what we wanted out of this go public process were a couple of things. One, we wanted capital certainty. We’ve got this machine built, and we want to make sure the process of taking this company public would fund the operation of that machine to hit some industry first milestones,” Twinney said.
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The machine Twinney is referencing is part of a program called Lawson Machine 26, or LM26 for short. It’s a demonstration facility where General Fusion has been conducting tests and developing its tech. According to General Fusion, the program has hit several milestones since it launched 16 months ago, including its first successful magnetized plasma—needed for fusion reactions—in February of 2025 and a successful plasma compression in April of that same year.
Looking beyond potentially going public next month, Twinney said the company has been focused on incremental milestones that move things forward toward commercialization.
“Start with the end in mind: we want to build commercial powerplants,” he said. “LM26, getting that funded was critical. This go public allows us to fully fund that machine and achieve industry-first milestones with that machine and from there, it’s a clearer path to get to first of a kind.”
With files from Josh Scott.
Photo by Florencia Tan Jun/Web Summit via Sportsfile.