L’Abeille of RENAISSANCE
N°3 - July2026
“L’Abeille,” pronounced [la‑bɛj], means “the bee”- a symbol of diligence and collective effort. Like a hive, the Renaissance Fusion team works to build a Sun‑inspired fusion machine- even a honeycomb cell echoes our stellarator’s shape! In this newsletter, you’ll find our perspective on the latest fusion developments and updates from us. Enjoy the read!
Don't miss the key highlights
Record investments into European commercial fusion
Image Credits: Focused Energy
The past six weeks removed any remaining doubt.
On May 27, Focused Energy closed a $240M Series A, the largest Series A in fusion up to that moment backed by RWE, SPRIND, the EIC Fund and Prime Movers Lab. This week, Proxima Fusion set a new record announcing a €411M round at a €2.4B valuation, the largest private fusion financing ever in Europe, with Google and RWE as strategic investors. A major European utility has now written fusion checks twice in six weeks
Image Credits: ENSREG
And Governments are following through…
Governments are matching private convictions. The EU's ENSREG Task Force on Fusion Energy held its inaugural meeting in Cadarache, launching its 2026–2027 work program on fusion-specific regulation. The UK opened public consultation on a National Policy Statement for Fusion Energy Generation (EN-8), designed to give fusion the same planning treatment as other electricity generation — and UKAEA committed £20M to a dedicated fusion innovation fund. In the US, the DOE's released Fusion Science and Technology Roadmap targets a commercial pilot plant by the mid-2030s. Fusion is no longer a scientific endeavor. It is industrial policy.
Stellarators, validated at the highest level
The DOE roadmap marks a notable shift: from a tokamak-centric approach to a multi-pathway strategy that explicitly recognizes the stellarator's economic potential:
“
For reasons related to confinement physics and engineering, the lowest-cost fusion power plant may not be a tokamak. For instance, the intrinsic steady-state plasma properties of the stellarator could provide economic advantages by eliminating the need for auxiliary plasma current drive sources and their associated recirculating power costs.”
— Fusion Science and Technology Roadmap 2026, US Department of Energy
The market agrees. Beyond Proxima's record round, Hefei-based startup Stellar Fusion raised ~€107M in its first round to pursue an HTS-magnet stellarator pathway. China's first quasi-axisymmetric stellarator (CFQS) passed factory acceptance in June proofs the credibility. Thea Energy raised $100 Mln series B late in May. The stellarator race is now global — and every entrant is a future HTS customer.
Image Credits: AMSC
Why These Trends Matter
What this means for Renaissance Fusion
Every magnetic confinement system — tokamak or stellarator — requires high-performance superconducting magnets, and therefore HTS tape. The demand signal is already visible in public markets: AMSC, the most direct US-listed HTS pure-player, just reported record revenue of $299M, up 34% year-over-year. As Europe's fusion companies move toward demonstration, demand for enabling technologies will outpace supply. Reactor developers will not be enough; Europe needs the manufacturing infrastructure to supply them at scale.
That is precisely where Renaissance Fusion sits: manufacturing next-generation wide-format HTS tapes while developing our simplified stellarator platform. HTS revenue now, fusion upside later, and European supply chain sovereignty throughout.
Renaissance Fusion updates
HTS pilot line: First deposits on our HTS pilot line in October
The commissioning of most of the machines in our HTS pilot line are in place and we expect to deposit the full HTS in October. This is the decisive step toward production of our first wide-format HTS tapes — and toward European superconducting manufacturing capability.
🎥 Preview the pilot line here
Coup de Cœur Prize — Les Trophées des Futures Licornes 2026
In Paris in June, Renaissance Fusion received the Coup de Cœur Prize at Les Trophées des Futures Licornes 2026, a distinction for French companies with the potential to exceed €1 billion in valuation within five years. Covering the winners, Challenges highlighted our two defining innovations: liquid-metal technologies and laser-patterned high-temperature superconductors.
“Its name — Coup de Cœur — reflects who we are,” said Agata Hidalgo, Head of Public Affairs & Media. “Renaissance Fusion is a team of 120 professionals from 27 countries, bringing their expertise, passion and determination to a shared mission: industrializing fusion and the technologies that will make it possible.”
Two world-class experts join our Senior Technical Advisory Committee
Dr. Timothy Luce brings more than four decades of experience across 13 fusion experiments — including the Wendelstein VII-AS and H-1 stellarators. After his Ph.D. at Princeton, he drove major advances in heating, current drive and power-plant-relevant scenarios on DIII-D at General Atomics, then served as Chief Scientist and Head of Science, Controls and Operations at the ITER Organization. He is now Division Director for Experimental Operations at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, leading the commissioning of FLARE and NSTX-U.
Dr. Daniel Andruczyk is a leading specialist in plasma physics and liquid-metal technologies, with more than two decades across world-class fusion laboratories: plasma diagnostics, heating and control at the Max Planck Institute; liquid-metal research at PPPL; and Principal Investigator of the HIDRA stellarator program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he also directed the Master of Engineering in Plasma Engineering.
Together, these appointments cover the two pillars of our stellarator architecture — large-machine operations and liquid-metal technology. Meet all our STAC members: renfusion.eu/stac
Save the date
FusionX Europe, September 24, Grenoble
In September, we host FusionX Europe: fusion companies, investors, industrial partners and policymakers, together in Grenoble, to work on commercialization, supply chains and the infrastructure fusion needs at scale.
We look forward to welcoming you.
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