Commonwealth Fusion Systems has agreed to sell Italian energy company Eni over $1 billion in electricity from its first fusion reactor.
The power plant will be built outside Richmond, Virginia, and will be close to the country’s highest density data center. The 400 megawatt fusion reactor called the ARC is expected to open in the early 2030s, CEO Bob Mumgard said.
The ENI contract is the second such transaction for Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS). In June, Google said it would buy half of the reactor’s power output. When asked, neither CFS nor Anyni would say the timeline of how much power the transaction covers.
Mumgaard told reporters last week that it was the first power plant for CFS, a Demo-scale SPARC reactor in Debens, Massachusetts. The company previously said it plans to turn on SPARC in the second half of 2026, and Mumgaard confirmed that CFS is “on the trajectory to do that.”
“One of the reasons we built SPARC is to allow us to actually get experience of what it’s like to build a near-full-scale system,” he said. “Ark will be a lot of many supported by a supply chain that is primed for scale.”
CFS is widely regarded as a leader in the fusion industry. The reactor design is based on Tokamak, a widely studied system in which a D-shaped superconducting magnet limits and compresses overheated plasma. In that plasma, particles collide, forming new atoms, releasing energy in the process. The company frequently updates scientists on their progress and runs extensive simulations to uncover potential hurdles.
CFS hopes to prove that SPARC can produce more power than is necessary to maintain the fusion reaction. But at the same time, the company cannot know for sure whether everything will work until SPARC is complete. This could run out of most of the nearly $3 billion raised so far, including the $863 million Series B2 round announced three weeks ago. The round included checks from a wide range of investors, including Nvidia, Google, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and ENI.
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This raises the question. If there is a delay, what will happen to CFS’ Google and ENI deals, or even worse, what if the reactor doesn’t work as planned?
Mumgaard said the contract is structured to be punitive and cooperative “walk the line.” The partner “understands these challenges that come first,” he said. “No one in this situation is like inventing a whole new technology, an entire industry. If things don’t work out on this day, we’re just going to leave.”
While Google suggests that it will use ARC electricity to bolster its data centers, ENI, one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, does not have a US business that demands that amount of energy.
“We’re excited to introduce you to our customers,” said Lorenzo Fiorillo, Technology Director, R&D, Digital, at Any.
In short, Anyni will resell it.
However, electricity produced by the first reactor, the ARC, will be expensive. Anni is more likely to lose money trading that power on the grid than profits.
Instead, this contract could help establish the price of fusion power and spend more money to build an ARC.
Mumgaard admitted as well. The electricity purchase agreement said, “give us certainty about where the electricity is going, what the price will be, etc., and so on, so that we bring that package to more financial investors in project finance and other areas and start a conversation about what we actually want to fund this factory.”
