Google has announced its entry into fusion energy with a landmark deal to purchase half the electricity output from Commonwealth Fusion Systems’ (CFS) first commercial power plant. In addition to buying 200 megawatts of clean power, Google is making an undisclosed investment in the fusion startup as part of CFS’s latest funding round. This new round is expected to rival the scale of CFS’s prior Series B funding, in which Google also participated, and that successfully raised $1.8 billion in 2021, making it the largest funding event for any fusion energy startup to date.
Bob Mumgaard, co-founder and CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, described Google’s involvement as a powerful endorsement of the technology and its market potential. “That’s a very strong demand signal,” Mumgaard noted, explaining that this influx of capital will accelerate essential research and development needed to expedite the commercial deployment of fusion energy.
CFS is currently constructing a demonstration reactor, Sparc, near Boston, with completion targeted for 2026. The company’s upcoming commercial facility, named Arc, is slated to come online in the early 2030s near Richmond, Virginia. Google’s power purchase agreement marks only the second time a major company has committed to buying fusion-generated electricity. Previously, in 2023, Microsoft made headlines by agreeing to purchase energy from Helion Energy’s future fusion plant, scheduled for operation in 2028.
With booming global demand spurred by artificial intelligence and cloud computing, Google has rapidly expanded its search for new, carbon-free energy solutions. These enormous data centers drive a relentless appetite for electricity, a demand expected to double by decade’s end. Michael Terrell, Google’s head of advanced energy strategies, emphasized the urgency: “To power all this, we know we’ll need to make big bets in this next frontier of energy innovation.”
Google’s energy strategy spans three distinct timelines. In the near term, the company’s focus continues on solar, wind, and battery storage solutions. In a medium-term outlook, Google is investing in geothermal power and small-scale modular nuclear reactors, as demonstrated by its involvement with the geothermal firm Fervo Energy and nuclear innovator Kairos Power. Fusion, according to Terrell, falls into Google’s longer-term vision, offering a vital addition to its renewable infrastructure—especially in regions less suited for traditional solar or wind installations.
In 2024 alone, Google secured over eight gigawatts of renewable energy, doubling its acquisitions from the prior year. Yet despite the critical role of solar and wind, Terrell noted that achieving uninterrupted power supply everywhere would require complementary energy technologies. Fusion offers a promising alternative, addressing issues related to intermittent generation and geographic limitations. Although potentially pricier on a per-megawatt-hour basis compared to mature renewables, fusion can help lower the overall portfolio cost for carbon-free energy, according to Terrell.
CFS’s Mumgaard expressed strong optimism that once fusion proves commercially viable, it will rapidly grow into a global energy source. Fusion plants, free from constraints due to geography, weather conditions, or specialized raw materials, can provide continuous, dependable power generation. “We expect that fusion can have a really big payoff,” he said. “Once it’s demonstrated that this works and the first plant is running, you could scale it—we could build plants around the world.”
