TheChek News Flow

The Italian university benefiting from the post-Brexit student shift

Bocconi is among the institutions filling the gap as European undergraduates avoid higher UK fees

At a gym on Bocconi University’s campus in Milan recently, one local member kicked up a fuss after an instructor led a class in English.

The episode underlined how the university’s push to step up international recruitment has resulted in a surge in foreign students, changing the district around the campus.

The Italian business school is one of the continental universities benefiting from a broader post-Brexit shift in European higher education, as EU students are put off applying to UK universities after losing access to domestic tuition fees, student loans and visa-free study. But it’s also seeing an influx of students from UK private schools.

Bocconi has been increasing the number of its courses taught in English: like other institutions including in Belgium and the Netherlands, it finds that helps to attract more foreign students, including British ones. Another attraction is that fees can be a fraction of those charged to foreign students by elite UK universities.

EU undergraduate applications to UK institutions fell 58 per cent between 2020 and 2024.

“We have adapted in order to welcome international students,” Bocconi rector Francesco Billari said. “Milan is a part of what Bocconi offers, I think it began with Brexit and then Covid created momentum for urban campuses.”

Applications to Bocconi from abroad have more than doubled since 2023, reaching 60 per cent of the total for the bachelor programme, including a rise of more than 175 per cent from the UK, the university said. Most of the foreign applications for the next academic year came from France, Turkey and the UK. 

The Italian business school is also attracting some of Britain’s most privileged students. In the past two years it has been in the top four foreign destinations for privately educated students in the UK, while close to 30 students applied from Eton College this year, compared with eight in 2023.

“There is a certain degree of risk aversion, since applicants at Oxbridge have a single shot at applying to one or the other . . . they need a fallback if they don’t get in,” Billari said.

Nearly 7 per cent of UK private school leavers now enrol at universities overseas — compared with 5 per cent in 2021.

At Bocconi, non-Italians now make up more than one-third of the 15,000-plus students, compared with 20 per cent in 2020.

Less well known internationally than some older British or French institutions, Bocconi has two-thirds the student body of Oxford or Cambridge, which have broader course offerings. But its relatively simple admissions process and cheaper fees are helping it to compete with its rivals.

International applicants can submit standardised test results, or sit the university’s test offered multiple times a year, unlike Oxford and Cambridge, where candidates have a single deadline and must navigate subject-specific tests and interviews. It is also simpler than France’s grandes écoles, where entry is funnelled through the country’s highly selective prépas system of preparatory classes and exams.

Fees of about €18,000 per year are much cheaper than elite UK universities for overseas students and are significantly below US institutions. Bocconi also provides financial support to more than a third of its students.

Billari said that applicants had also been attracted by the international academic staff, new courses on global law, AI, data and political science, and Milan’s international appeal.

Milan has seen new urban developments and better connections during the past decade, helping draw professionals in finance, fashion, design and technology from across the world. Foreign residents now account for about one-fifth of the city’s 1.4mn population.

Jasmine Levell, a Londoner studying international economics and finance at Bocconi, said she was attracted by the location as well as the university. “I wanted a change from London but still wanted to be in a city,” she said. “Milan is smaller, which makes everything very accessible and for students it’s great.”

Bocconi was founded by luxury department store owner Ferdinando Bocconi in 1902 to train the managers, bankers and civil servants of a newly industrialising nation. Postwar alumni include former prime minister Mario Monti, Vodafone CEO Margherita Della Valle and Kering chief Luca de Meo.

But one Italian London-based banker and Bocconi alumnus accompanying his 17-year-old son to an open day at the Milanese university was surprised at his son’s choice.

“It’s somewhat tragically ironic that we spent all this money to send our kids to private school in England, hoping they’d go to Oxbridge and now here we are,” he said.

“It’s apparently cooler to live in Milan now for these kids who probably don’t want more of the same English countryside boarding school experience at university.”

World’s largest carmakers seek to avert motor oil crisis

Shortage of Group III base oils prompts auto manufacturers to turn to new blends

Carmakers including Volkswagen, Stellantis and Toyota are turning to new blends of motor oil and lubricants to ease a serious supply shortage caused by the Middle East conflict.

After getting through the early months of the war, carmakers have now run out of inventories of high-quality base oils for engine oil that the US and Europe had largely sourced from the Middle East.

They have since found alternative lubricant manufacturers but industry executives warn that those supplies remain tight and vulnerable to any fresh shock.

For car drivers globally, any further shortage will make their routine oil changes — a procedure critical to prevent engines from malfunctioning — more expensive and prone to delays.

Prices of Group III base oils have almost trebled compared with prewar levels, at about $4,000 per tonne in Europe and the US.

“Alternative suppliers also have limited volumes, and any renewed shipping disruption, refinery outage or other supply shock could rapidly worsen the situation,” said Holly Alfano, chief executive of the Independent Lubricant Manufacturers Association. 

“The industry continues to operate with little margin for error,” she added.

The supply chains for Group III base oils, a highly refined oil product that is used to make motor oil, were heavily disrupted in March after Iranian missiles struck Shell’s vast gas-to-liquids plant in Qatar, requiring significant repair work. People close to the industry said some of Shell’s customers had made frantic calls to secure alternative supplies.

Gabriella Twining, global head of base oil pricing at Argus Media, said some suppliers of Middle Eastern Group III oil in Europe and the US had sold out and declared force majeure on those supplies.   

“There are fewer and fewer alternatives,” Twining said. “Even if the Strait [of Hormuz] opens tomorrow, we anticipate that Europe and the US would not receive a replenishment shipment until October at the earliest.”

To avert a crisis, carmakers rushed to secure alternative supplies of motor oil — a shift that industry officials said was challenging since manufacturers had to ensure the same level of quality and performance with alternative formulations of the base oils and seek approval for the new products.

A manager at a major European lubricants producer said the situation remained fluid. 

“Before, 100 per cent of the original equipment manufacturers would be reluctant to accept any other lubricants, but these days some of them are desperate and if the market situation continues like this, they might be forced to be more flexible on the specifications to keep feeding the market,” they said.

Stellantis said it evaluated “reformulated lubricants” and secured alternative products that met “applicable industry standards”. “Our focus remains on . . . minimising any impact to vehicle service and maintenance activities,” it added.

Volkswagen cautioned that the shortage of the base oils was “an industry-wide situation beyond the direct control of individual manufacturers”. 

But the German carmaker has also secured the necessary supplies for now and is evaluating additional sourcing options that comply with its “technical specifications and quality requirements”.  

Japan’s Toyota also said it was affected but had already secured alternative supplies. 

Since June, customers in Japan at some of Suzuki Motor’s dealerships have faced delays with their routine engine oil changes. Its chief executive Toshihiro Suzuki told shareholders that the group was reviewing the entire supply chain and diversifying its suppliers of the base oils. 

A taxi company in Osaka, in the western part of Japan, said the supply situation had improved slightly but prices of the base oils had doubled, forcing it to raise taxi prices for consumers. 

While many carmakers have secured alternative supplies for now, some analysts warned that the situation could change at any time. Consolidation within the industry has narrowed the number of suppliers, while alternative suppliers such as South Korea have not been able to get their normal crude supplies. 

Services won’t restore the golden age but could give young shoppers a reason to return

In retail, the department store has become a synonym for a slow death. Saks, Sears, Barneys, JCPenney and many others have all fallen over the past decade, and the survivors look fragile. But not everyone is ready to write them off. This week, Mike Ashley, the serial buyer of struggling high street brands, acquired luxury Knightsbridge department store Harvey Nichols.

Harvey Nicks, as it is known, has suffered similar problems to other department stores: costs went up a tenth between 2019 and 2025, according to Companies House filings, while sales fell 20 per cent. Harvey Nichols hasn’t turned a profit since 2019. But Ashley is betting that he can strip out costs and fill its stores with his own brands, helped by his existing relationships with luxury suppliers and stakes in names such as Burberry and Hugo Boss.

Ashley’s deal also hints at a broader point. Perhaps department stores have a better shot at reinvention than it might seem. Being an everything shop is hard in the era of Amazon, direct-to-consumer channels and big luxury brands that want to control their own distribution networks, but they are well placed to surf two new retail trends.

The first is that they can offer space to smaller brands squeezed out of the increasingly expensive world of bricks and mortar: in the US, Kim Kardashian’s brand Skims first moved into physical retail through Nordstrom stores. And the second is that all those square feet can be used to host services that people can’t get online such as tailoring, personal styling, cooking schools, repair workshops and restaurants. That’s an extra revenue source and an opportunity to upsell and cross-sell: think flogging treadmills as well as trainers when you offer gait analyses.

Big brand retailers have already made a success out of the service economy. Apple turned its shops into tech support centres; a third of Pets at Home’s consumer revenue now comes from vet services; Ikea proves that you can sell furniture as well as meatballs under one roof. And some department stores are now giving this strategy a go.

John Lewis — whose managing director stepped down this week amid talk of “really tough” trading conditions — says appointments for its personal styling and nursery services both rose about a fifth last year. Cafés and restaurants account for more than one in five of its in-store transactions. Revenue at the department store, excluding Waitrose, returned to growth last year for the first time since 2021, although it still only managed a threadbare 1.6 per cent operating margin.

Services are unlikely to return department stores to their golden age: John Lewis’s cash from operations has fallen 20 per cent in a decade. But with younger generations reviving a whole host of nineties trends, these grand old institutions may well find a new reason to get shoppers through the door.

Chip giant could invest half the total when Ohio data center deal closes and half when SB Energy IPOs

Nvidia is in talks to invest as much as $3 billion in SB Energy, the Softbank Group-backed developer of a massive planned Ohio data center project for OpenAI, according to people familiar with the discussions.

The investment is being discussed as part of Nvidia’s negotiations with OpenAI and SB Energy over the chip giant providing around $100 billion in credit support for the planned Ohio data center campus, one of the people said. Those deals would add to a growing number cases where Nvidia is using its financial heft to support AI-related companies and projects to make it easier for firms to buy and use Nvidia hardware.

Nvidia has discussed investing half of the $3 billion when a deal for the Ohio project is signed and the other half as part of SB Energy’s planned initial public offering, the people said.

A check of as much as $1.5 billion would make Nvidia one of the largest investors in the planned IPO. SB Energy is aiming to go public as soon as next month and could raise at least $5 billion in the IPO, according to one of the people.

Talks over the potential Nvidia investment in SB Energy are ongoing. It’s possible that the investment size could shrink, and there’s no guarantee it would lead to a deal. SB Energy could also choose to go public at a later time and aim to raise more money in the IPO, the person said.

SB Energy, majority owned by Softbank, is spearheading the planned data center in southern Ohio, which is expected to include 10 gigawatts of new power generation capacity and, over time, cost roughly $500 billion to develop based on today’s prices for hardware, labor, power and other materials.

OpenAI is expected to use the data center and use chips from Nvidia, which is why the chip giant is in talks to provide a backstop around $100 billion in credit support to help OpenAI finance the project’s buildout, The Information reported on Friday.

SB Energy has its roots in developing renewable power generation projects. It didn’t have much experience building and developing data centers but in late 2025 it acquired Studio 151, a company that does construction management, engineering and operations for data centers.

SB Energy is also developing a 1.2 gigawatt data center site for Oracle and OpenAI near Austin in Milam County, Texas, and has been developing solar and battery storage projects across Texas, California and other Western states.

In connection with the Milam County project, OpenAI agreed in January to invest $500 million into SB Energy.

Nvidia has been pouring investment into a range of companies in the AI ecosystem, from developers of AI models that use its chips to data center builders. It recently agreed to invest $2 billion in Lancium, the power infrastructure developer behind a separate OpenAI campus in Texas with Oracle AI, The Information reported this month. As part of that deal, Nvidia agreed to commit another $1 billion as Lancium secures additional planned power.

Also this year, Nvidia wrote $2 billion checks to cloud providers CoreWeave and Nebius and invested $30 billion in OpenAI—which has been one of the biggest drivers of demand for its AI chips.

Nvidia’s credit support and potential SB Energy investment would help make the Ohio project possible and incentivize Nvidia to guarantee the second phase of the buildout. But it could feed some investors’ worries that the AI ecosystem is becoming too dependent on Nvidia.

Some investors also have expressed concern that Nvidia is doing too much circular financing. One credit executive familiar with the Ohio talks described deals where Nvidia is directly investing in its customers or promising to purchase unsold capacity from its customers as something “nobody is super excited about anymore.” Another credit executive involved in AI infrastructure deals with Nvidia said that some private credit firms are wary of lending directly to OpenAI.

Nvidia on Monday touted the investment value of its chips in announcing partnerships with six of Wall Street’s biggest firms to raise $500 billion in independent financing to help customers buy Nvidia’s hardware. The funds would all be non-Nvidia capital and need independent underwriting, and Nvidia said in a blog post that the initiative is designed to address the circular financing concern.

After years of snapping up wind and solar developments, hyperscalers like Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft are betting that natural gas will power the data centers behind their lofty AI ambitions. But a new research report suggests they may regret their newfound affinity for the fossil fuel.

Natural gas prices could triple in some parts of the U.S. in the coming years as hyperscaler demand collides with declining supply growth and rising exports of liquefied natural gas, according to Noreva, an energy research firm. Hyperscalers might not be prepared for future price shocks.

“I think everyone in the energy markets has been lulled into a sense that gas prices can’t go up,” Peter Gardett, CEO of Noreva, told TechCrunch. “You just need simple arithmetic to get to a much tighter gas market than you were in just a few years ago.”

Hyperscalers’ big bets

Cheap gas has pushed hyperscalers to lock up part of the market. In March, Meta said it would build a massive 7.5-gigawatt natural gas power plant in Louisiana to power its Hyperion data center. A few days later, Microsoft and Google each said they’d build their own gigawatt-scale gas power plants, both in Texas. And not to be left out, Amazon plans to build a 7.6-gigawatt gas power plant in Texas.

For companies that historically have shied away from large capital expenditures, the data center building boom suddenly has them investing heavily in the physical world while also pushing them deeper into energy markets, which are even less familiar territory.

Gardett said at least one investor he spoke with was “surprised” by how much natural gas price risk hyperscalers are willing to take on. “They’re doing things that are not normal for an off-taker to do,” he said.

Noreva expects natural gas prices to soar above $10 per million BTUs in certain hubs, or delivery points for futures contracts. Today, prices range from about $2 to $4.50 per million BTUs, with the widely traded Henry Hub in Louisiana priced at just under $3.

Fuel represents about half the cost of electricity from a large power plant, so a doubling or tripling of natural gas prices could make “bring your own power” AI data centers much more expensive to run. That could drive up token costs, or it could push hyperscalers to connect to the grid, driving electricity prices higher.

For the foreseeable future, natural gas prices appear stable — futures contracts aren’t anticipating big changes. “It’s not an unreasonable bet,” Gardett said. But he’s not convinced they’re right.

Surging demand

Natural gas prices have been stable thanks to years of relatively flat demand and the steady addition of new supplies, which has countered waning production at old wells, Gardett said. He expects that energy companies will be able to add more supplies, just not at the rate they did before. Plus, new wells are getting more expensive.

“That alone wouldn’t change the economics here. What’s changing the number is that finally we’re connecting the domestic gas market to the global gas market,” he said. “And the second is the AI demand pull.”

Hyperscalers have been lured to Texas and Louisiana by cheap natural gas prices. In West Texas, in particular, most wells have been focused on oil, and the natural gas that comes out is a byproduct that hasn’t found much of a market. There weren’t a lot of big pipelines to move it out of the region, so producers sold natural gas at a discount to anyone who could use it. That’s changing, though.

“They’ve finally built some pipelines out there, and a lot of that is headed towards export markets,” Gardett said.

As West Texas becomes more connected to national and international natural gas markets, demand there will influence prices elsewhere and vice versa. Even modest price swings near hyperscalers’ big data centers could be magnified elsewhere.

“You will get places where you get a lot of gas next to someplace where there’s none, and so you’ll get those big differentials,” Gardett said. It’s those differentials that will drive prices in some regions above $10 per million BTUs for extended periods of time.

Under that scenario, even if hyperscalers can stomach higher prices, their natural gas consumption could add a new dimension to the data center backlash. Already, 80% of consumers are worried about data centers’ impact on their utility bills, mostly related to electricity. That angst could spill over to natural gas bills.

Hyperscalers, in their haste to power their AI data centers, are quickly enmeshing themselves in the fossil fuel world. It’s a space in which they have relatively little experience, but one that could soon materially impact their businesses.

“On future Alphabet earning calls, you will hear them talk about the correlation between natural gas pricing and Google results, which is strange, but that’s where we are,” Gardett said.

Volleyball, cross training and golf shoes saw solid performance.

It might be the summer of the dress shoe revival, but U.S. consumers still prioritized performance footwear in the first half.

That’s according to new data from Circana’s Retail Tracking Service, which showed that running shoes reigned supreme, with both dollar and unit sales increasing a very 13 percent. Cross-training, golf and volleyball shoes also saw sales gains as fitness and wellness continued to drive purchases.

Overall, performance footwear generated 6 percent dollar growth for the six-month period, and unit sales also increased.µ

Overall results weren’t as robust. All told, the U.S. footwear industry showed first-half dollar growth of 1 percent, mirroring results in the first quarter. Higher average prices drove the small gain, while unit sales declined overall. Tariffs and rising supply chain costs have been steadily pushing up prices for the past several years.

“Consumers remain highly intentional about their footwear purchases,” said Beth Goldstein, footwear and accessories industry advisor at Circana. “The biggest growth stories in the first half came from categories that blend comfort, versatility, and performance. Fashion trends are generating excitement and momentum, but sneakers remain the largest part of the business by a wide margin. The long-term winners will be the brands that can combine innovation and relevance with the functionality consumers continue to prioritize in how they are living, working, and moving today.”

While performance shoes are a definitive bright spot, sport lifestyle footwear showed a decline in the period, and recent results from athletic brands illustrate a challenged sneaker market overall.

Amid all the buzz about a dress shoe comeback, fashion footwear sales remain flat in the first half, although the second half has the potential to show increases. Certain segments did stand out: Ballerina styles posted double-digit growth, while mules, clogs and pumps also grew. Multi-strap sandals lagged behind, while slides and flip-flops showed gains.

Looking ahead, Circana’s “Future of Footwear” report predicts that the U.S. industry will close out 2026 generally flat.

In that report, nearly half of consumers reported delaying purchases or choosing lower-priced alternatives due to price increases.

“As consumers continue to navigate economic uncertainty and rising costs, the greatest opportunities will come from innovation, differentiated product stories, and compelling value propositions,” Goldstein said.

Hoka, Brooks Running and Saucony see expansion plans across the European market as a key component of future growth.

Europe‘s opening more doors as it becomes the next growth frontier for some American running brands that are already a hit with the U.S. consumer.

Hoka, for example, has opened doors in Berlin, Milan, and Chamonix in Southeastern France. Deckers president and chief executive officer Stefano Caroti, who previously told investors that Chamonix is the birthplace of the brand, said “EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) delivered robust wholesale sell-through and another quarterly record [in Q2] for reorders,” while international DTC (direct-to-consumer) continued to generate exception revenue growth across Europe.

Caroti said that while the brand has seen some timing differences in Europe, “the demand continues to be robust across all markets.”

The CEO noted that even though the consumer in Europe is more pressured than its U.S. counterpart due to higher energy prices, “we’re holding our own. And even in times of challenge, what I’ve experienced is consumers gravitate to premium brands and brands that make them feel good. So we anticipate having a great year in Europe.”

At Brooks Running, the company on Wednesday said first half revenue growth was 14 percent, with demand for the performance running brand’s footwear, apparel, and accessories remaining “strong across regions and channels.” The brand’s big revenue growth area was EMEA, where it was up 39 percent for the half.

Brooks CEO Dan Sheridan said the running continues to play an increasingly important role for people around the globe who are prioritizing health and wellness in their lives. “At Brooks, we aim to give runners the very best product and experiences to pursue that. Our first-half results reflect that focus and the incredible work of our teams globally,” Sheridan said.

In terms of individual markets, Brooks “outpaced” the performance running footwear market in France, which grew 11 percent in the second quarter. Brooks also remained No. 1 in Germany in adult performance running footwear priced at a minimum of 90 euros. Data points were based on estimates and retail tracking statistics from Circana.

Brooks also expanded its European presence when it showcased its approach to lifestyle footwear in June during Paris Fashion Week through its RE: Innovation Studio, a space that highlighted the brand’s approach to movement beyond run. Glycerin 12 was reimagined through modern performance innovation, including the brand’s proprietary Loft V3 cushioning and 5D Fit Print upper. And it also featured the reinvention of one of its oldest shoes, the Brooks Vanguard, pairing a low-profile 1970s silhouette with Loft V2 cushioning.

Also growing its European presence is Saucony, one of the two big growth stories — the other is Merrell — under the Wolverine Worldwide Inc. umbrella. Wolverine CEO Chris Hufnagel said Thursday during the company’s second quarter earnings call that revenue at Saucony was up 9 percent. He described the brand as “uniquely positioned” as a challenger brand at the intersection of market performance and lifestyle running, the two fastest growin categories.

Saucony’s global growth story is boosted by its key city strategy, which began in London a few years ago, followed by France. The brand has since expanded to Berlin recently.

Hufnagel also noted that search interest growth rate more than tripled in the U.K., while France grew at an even “significantly faster pace.” And he noted that sell-through trends in EMEA “are also very strong, creating a healthy pull dynamic which we are actively managing to cultivate sustainable growth, focusing on disciplined distribution and segmentation strategies.”

Over the last several years, fusion power has gone from the butt of jokes — always a decade away! — to an increasingly tangible and tantalizing technology that has drawn investors off the sidelines.

The technology may be challenging to master and expensive to build today, but fusion promises to harness the nuclear reaction that powers the sun to generate nearly limitless energy here on Earth. If startups are able to complete commercially viable fusion power plants, then they have the potential to upend trillion-dollar markets.

The bullish wave buoying the fusion industry has been driven by three advances: more powerful computer chips, more sophisticated AI, and powerful high-temperature superconducting magnets. Together, they have helped deliver more sophisticated reactor designs, better simulations, and more complex control schemes.

It doesn’t hurt that, at the end of 2022, a U.S. Department of Energy lab announced that it had produced a controlled fusion reaction that produced more power than the lasers had imparted to the fuel pellet. The experiment had crossed what’s known as scientific breakeven, and while it’s still a long ways from commercial breakeven, where the reaction produces more than the entire facility consumes, it was a long-awaited step that proved the underlying science was sound.

Founders have built on that momentum in recent years, pushing the private fusion industry forward at a rapid pace. Below is a list of startups that have raised over $100 million in committed capital from private investors, according to data provided to TechCrunch by FusionX.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) has raised about a third of all private capital invested in fusion companies to date. Its latest round, which closed in July, added $1 billion to its coffers, bringing its total raised to $3.94 billion, according to FusionX.

CFS’s catapulted into the lead in 2021 with a $1.8 billion Series B. Since then, the startup has been hard at work in Massachusetts building Sparc, its first-of-a-kind power plant intended to produce power at what it calls “commercially relevant” levels. The company says Sparc should reach scientific breakeven — also known as Q > 1 — sometime in 2027.

Sparc’s reactor is a tokamak design, which resembles a doughnut. The D-shaped cross section is wound with high-temperature superconducting tape, which, when energized, generates a powerful magnetic field that will contain and compress the superheated plasma. Heat generated from the reaction is converted to steam to power a turbine. CFS designed its magnets in collaboration with MIT, where co-founder and CEO Bob Mumgaard worked as a researcher on fusion reactor designs and high-temperature superconductors.

The Massachusetts-based CFS expects to have Sparc operational in late 2026 or early 2027. Later this decade, the company says it will begin construction on Arc, its commercial power plant that will produce 400 megawatts of electricity. The facility will be built near Richmond, Virginia, and Google has agreed to buy half its output.

CFS is backed by a long list of investors, including Breakthrough Energy Ventures, The Engine, Bill Gates, and others.

Of all fusion startups, Helion has the most aggressive timeline. The company plans to produce electricity from its reactor in 2028. Its first customer? Microsoft.

Helion, based in Everett, Washington, uses a type of reactor called a field-reversed configuration, where magnets surround a reaction chamber that looks like an hourglass with a bulge at the point where the two sides come together. At each end of the hourglass, the reactor spins the plasma into doughnut shapes that are shot toward each other at more than 1 million mph. When they collide in the middle, additional magnets help induce fusion. When fusion occurs, it boosts the plasma’s own magnetic field, which induces an electrical current inside the reactor’s magnetic coils. That electricity is then harvested directly from the machine.

The company most recently raised $465 million in June in a Series G that valued the company at $15.5 billion. Its previous round, announced in January 2025, totaled $425 million. Altogether, Helion has raised $3.2 billion in committed capital, according to FusionX. Investors include Sam Altman, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Reid Hoffman, KKR, BlackRock, Peter Thiel’s Mithril Capital Management, and Capricorn Investment Group.

Founded in 1998, TAE Technologies (formerly known as Tri Alpha Energy) was spun out of the University of California, Irvine by Norman Rostoker. It uses a field-reversed configuration, but with a twist: after the two plasma shots collide in the middle of the reactor, the company bombards the plasma with particle beams to keep it spinning in a cigar shape. That improves the stability of the plasma, allowing more time for fusion to occur and for more heat to be extracted to spin a turbine.

In December 2025, TAE announced that it would merge with President Donald Trump’s social media company, Trump Media & Technology Group. The all-stock transaction would value the combined company at $6 billion. TAE would receive $200 million plus another $100 million upon filing paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission. When the deal was announced, the companies said the combined entity would be led by two co-CEOs, TAE CEO Michl Binderbauer and Trump Media’s CEO, which is currently Kevin McGurn, who is serving in an interim capacity.

The fusion startup had previously raised $150 million in June 2025 from existing investors, including Google, Chevron, and New Enterprise. Prior to the merger announcement, TAE had raised a total of $1.65 billion, according to FusionX.

Pacific Fusion burst out of the gate with a Series A that topped $1 billion, the startup has told TechCrunch. That’s a whopping sum even among well-funded fusion startups. The company will use inertial confinement to achieve fusion, but instead of lasers compressing the fuel, it will use coordinated electromagnetic pulses. The trick is in the timing: All 156 impedance-matched Marx generators need to produce 2 terawatts for 100 nanoseconds, and those pulses need to simultaneously converge on the target.

The company is led by CEO Eric Lander, the scientist who led the Human Genome Project, and chief scientist Will Regan. Pacific Fusion’s funding might be massive, but the startup hasn’t gotten it all at once. Rather, its investors will pay out in tranches when the company achieves specified milestones, an approach that’s common in biotech.

Most investors have favored large startups that are pursuing tokamak designs or some flavor of inertial confinement. But stellarators have shown great promise in scientific experiments, including the Wendelstein 7-X reactor in Germany.

Proxima Fusion is making the most of its proximity to the successful experiment, raising more than $682.9 million across rounds, according to FusionX. The most recent round, which was announced in July, valued the company at $2.7 billion. Investors include Google, RWE, Balderton Capital, Cherry Ventures, East X Ventures, and XTX Ventures.

Stellarators are similar to tokamaks in that they confine plasma in a ring-like shape using powerful magnets. But they do it with a twist — literally. Rather than force plasma into a human-designed ring, stellarators twist and bulge to accommodate the plasma’s quirks. The result should be a plasma that remains stable for longer, increasing the chances of fusion reactions.

Proxima is planning to complete Alpha, it’s net-energy demonstrator, in the early 2030s, and Stellaris, it’s commercial power plant, later that decade.

Shine Technologies is taking a cautious — and possibly pragmatic — approach to generating fusion power. Selling electrons from a fusion power plant is years off, so instead, it’s starting by selling neutron testing and medical isotopes. More recently, it has been developing a way to recycle radioactive waste. Shine hasn’t picked an approach for a future fusion reactor, instead saying that it’s developing necessary skills for when that time comes.

The company has raised a total of $1 billion, according to PitchBook. Investors include Energy Ventures Group, Koch Disruptive Technologies, Nucleation Capital, and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. The company most recently raised a $240 million round in February led by NantWorks with participation from investors including Deerfield Management, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Oaktree Capital Management, Pelican Energy Partners, and the Sumitomo Corporation of Americas.

Only one fusion experiment, the National Ignition Facility (NIF), has surpassed scientific breakeven, and the chief scientist of that endeavor, Annie Kritcher, is part of Inertia Enterprises‘ founding team. She’s joined by Mike Dunne, a Stanford professor, and Jeff Lawson, who co-founded Twilio and currently owns The Onion. In April, the startup signed three agreements to commercialize the technology developed at the NIF.

Inertia plans to use lasers to bombard fusion fuel pellets, an inertial confinement design that echoes the one Kritcher successfully used at the NIF. Inertia Enterprises emerged from stealth in February with $450 million in Series A funding in a round led by Bessemer Venture Partners with participation from GV, Modern Capital, Threshold Ventures, and others.

Now in its third decade, General Fusion has raised over $442 million, according to FuionX data. The Richmond, British Columbia-based company was founded in 2002 by physicist Michel Laberge, who wanted to prove a different approach to fusion known as magnetized target fusion (MTF). Investors include Jeff Bezos, Temasek, BDC Capital, and Chrysalix Venture Capital.

In a General Fusion’s reactor, a liquid metal wall surrounds a chamber in which plasma is injected. Pistons surrounding the wall push it inward, compressing the plasma inside and sparking a fusion reaction. The resulting neutrons heat the liquid metal, which can be circulated through a heat exchanger to generate steam to spin a turbine.

General Fusion hit a rough patch in spring 2025. The company ran short of cash as it was building LM26, its latest device that it hoped would hit breakeven in 2026. Just days after hitting a key milestone, it laid off 25% of its staff. CEO Greg Twinney penned an open letter pleading for funding from investors.

In August 2025, they delivered somewhat, injecting $22 million in a pay-to-play round that one investor called “the least amount of capital possible” to keep General Fusion afloat. Then in November, securities filings in Canada revealed that the company had raised $51.1 million in SAFE notes from nearly 70 investors, the Globe and Mail reported.

In January, General Fusion said it would go public via a reverse merger with a special purpose acquisition company. The company listed on the Nasdaq on July 13, 2026, and the transaction net the company $127 million, per FusionX.

Zap Energy isn’t using high-temperature superconducting magnets or super-powerful lasers to keep its plasma confined. Rather, it zaps the plasma (get it?) with an electric current, which then generates its own magnetic field. The magnetic field compresses the plasma to about 1 millimeter, at which point ignition occurs. The neutrons released by the fusion reaction bombard a liquid metal blanket that surrounds the reactor, heating it up. The liquid metal is then cycled through a heat exchanger, where it produces steam to drive a turbine.

The startup announced a partial pivot in April, saying it will pursue nuclear fission in addition to fusion, while also exploring a hybrid power plant that would blend both nuclear fusion and fission. It also hired a new CEO, Zabrina Johal, who has expertise in the fission industry. Zap claims the move will help it bring in revenue earlier than fusion alone.

The Everett, Washington-based company has raised $325 million, according to FusionX. Backers include Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures, DCVC, Lowercarbon, Energy Impact Partners, Chevron Technology Ventures, and Bill Gates as an angel.

Tokamak Energy takes the usual tokamak design — the doughnut shape — and squishes it, reducing its aspect ratio to the point where the outer bounds start resembling a sphere. Like many other tokamak-based startups, the company uses high-temperature superconducting magnets (the rare earth barium copper oxide, or REBCO, variety). Since its design is more compact than a traditional tokamak, it requires less in the way of magnets, which should reduce costs.

The Oxfordshire, U.K.-based startup’s ST40 prototype, which looks like a large, steampunk Fabergé egg, generated an ultra-hot, 100-million degree Celsius plasma in 2022. Its next generation, Demo 4, is currently under construction and is intended to test the company’s magnets in “fusion power plant-relevant scenarios.” Tokamak Energy raised $125 million in November 2024 to continue its reactor design and expand its magnet business. In April, the startup said it would be supplying magnets for the U.K.’s STEP Fusion program, a government program that is working toward a spherical tokamak-based power plant.

In total, the company has raised $284 million according to FusionX. Its investors include Future Planet Capital, In-Q-Tel, Midven, and Capri-Sun founder Hans-Peter Wild, according to PitchBook.

Germany-based Focused Energy is another fusion startup that traces its lineage to the National Ignition Facility (NIF). In addition to using laser pulses to compress a fuel target, the company has hired Debbie Callahan as its chief strategy officer. Callahan helped design the fuel target at NIF. Her job at Focused Energy will be to figure out how to turn the NIF’s painstakingly crafted fuel target into something that can be mass manufactured at a rate of nearly 1 million per day.

Focused Energy raised an oversubscribed $240 million Series A in June, bringing its total private capital raised to $277 million, according to FusionX. The company has also received $200 million in grants. Investors include the German Federal Agency for Breakthrough Innovation (SPRIND), Prime Movers Lab, and the utility RWE, which has granted Focused Energy access to a decommissioned nuclear fission power plant it operates.

Marvel Fusion follows the inertial confinement approach, the same basic technique that the National Ignition Facility used to prove that controlled nuclear fusion reactions could produce more power than was needed to kick them off. Marvel fires powerful lasers at a target embedded with silicon nanostructures that cascade under the bombardment, compressing the fuel to the point of ignition. Because the target is made using silicon, it should be relatively simple to manufacture, leaning on the semiconductor manufacturing industry’s decades of experience.

The inertial confinement fusion startup is building a demonstration facility in collaboration with Colorado State University, which it expects to have operational by 2027. Munich-based Marvel has raised a total of $208 million from investors including b2venture, Deutsche Telekom, Earlybird, and HV Capital with Taavet Hinrikus and Albert Wenger as angels.

Stellarator startup Type One Energy is planning to build a fusion reactor on the site of a retired Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) coal power plant. The magnetic confinement device is expected to generate 350 megawatts of electricity, and the company hopes to bring it online by the mid-2030s.

Unlike other fusion startups, Type One plans to sell key technology to organizations like the TVA, allowing them to build, own, and operate the equipment, similar to how many fossil fuel power plants are developed today. Type One has raised $174.5 million to date, according to FusionX, including an extended Series A that totaled $82.5 million. The startup is currently raising a $250 million Series B.

With all the startups pursuing fusion power, it was perhaps inevitable that another would pop up to develop components that round out a power plant. The so-called balance of plant, or the parts that sit outside the reactor, range from gyrotrons that heat plasma to heat extraction systems to harvest power from fusion reactions to turn it into electricity.

Kyoto Fusioneering has made an early bet that if even one fusion startup succeeds in generating enough power to sell to the grid, that the industry will need a supplier for the balance of plant and the expertise to integrate it into whichever fusion technologies win out.

Venture capitalists appear to agree, having invested $121 million in Kyoto Fusioneering, per FuxionX. Investors include 31Ventures, In-Q-Tel, JIC Venture Growth Investments, Mitsubishi, and Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Investment, according to PitchBook.

Unlike many other fusion startups, First Light Fusion doesn’t use magnets to generate the conditions necessary for fusion. Instead, it follows an approach known as inertial confinement, in which fusion fuel pellets are compressed until they ignite.

But even then, First Light doesn’t hew to orthodoxy. Most attempts at inertial confinement use lasers to do the dirty work, following the lead of the National Ignition Facility, which produced a groundbreaking experiment in 2022. First Light had previously planned to fire a projectile at a target using a two-stage gun, but it has since dropped those plans

First Light says it is offering its core technologies to other companies looking to build an inertial confinement power plant. A spokesperson for First Light said that it is planning to build “pulsed power capability that would act as our demonstrator plant but would have other science and defense applications.”

Based in Oxfordshire, U.K., First Light has raised $140 million, per FusionX data. Its investors include Invesco, IP Group, and Tencent, according to PitchBook.

Thea Energy is betting its pixel-inspired magnets will help it build a stellarator for less money. Stellarators can keep plasmas burning for long periods of time — a boon when it comes to running a commercial power plant — but to do so, they require twisty magnetic fields. Most stellarators build magnets that mimic that complex shape, but Thea Energy thinks that by wreathing its doughnut-shaped reactor in dozens of smaller magnets, it can use control software to create the necessary kinks.

In May, Thea raised $100 million in a Series B led by the U.S. Innovative Technology Fund, just over two years after a $20 million Series A. Across all rounds, the startup has raised $120 million in private capital. Other investors include Prelude Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, Hitachi Ventures, and Emerald Technology Ventures.

Though nothing about fusion can be described as simple, Xcimer takes a relatively straightforward approach: follow the basic science that’s behind the National Ignition Facility’s breakthrough net-positive experiment and redesign the technology that underpins it from the ground up. The Colorado-based startup is planning to build a 10-megajoule laser system, 5x more powerful than the NIF setup that made history. Molten salt walls surround the reaction chamber, absorbing heat and protecting the first solid wall from damage. In June, Xcimer turned on Phoenix, a prototype system that it says is the most powerful privately owned laser in the world.

Founded in July 2022, Xcimer has raised $101 million from investors, including Hedosophia, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Emerson Collective, Gigascale Capital, and Lowercarbon Capital.