Opportunities in Fusion Energy (Part of ROC Startup Week)

What is happening in Fusion?

As of March 31, 2026, more than $17.88 billion had moved into the global private fusion energy sector, and an additional $2.501 billion in venture capital was announced between May 27 and July 30, 2026. As of November 13, 2025, 56 nuclear fusion startups had been founded. These startups spent $538 million in the 12 months ending in April 2026 and are projected to spend $682 million in the 12-month period ending in April 2027.

Why have I not heard about this?

There have been numerous articles on developments in fusion - but most people are not paying attention because they assume net power is not possible anytime soon. Recent articles include:

• Washington Post - Sept. 17
• Fox News - Aug 29th
• Bloomberg - Sept. 9
• Newsweek - Aug 29th
• The Economist Fusion Fest - April 2026
• Politico - July 24th
• Financial Times - July 14th

Because this topic is so new, most reporters get the topic wildly inaccurate; so there has been alot of noise and confusion in the media and public on this topic - this will only grow as fusion startups get closer to net power.

How can Rochester Startups get involved?

Several federal agencies are lining up grants for academics and small business to support fusion research, this includes:

• ARPA-E is doing $135 million in funding
• ARPA-E is planning additional grants for HTS manufacturing
• DOE SBIR is supporting fusion proposals - 147 million
• 2027 NDAA calls for a Office of Fusion in Navy
• A 10 billion dollar bill is drafted in the US House

There is also a need to educate a new workforce that better understands this topic - there are over 700 "fusion jobs" posted on Fusion Energy Base - and a 2023 NSF funded study projected 25,000 workers could be needed by 2035. This talk will cover a plan for a new degree focused on this industry.

How is fusion already impacting WNY Manufacturing firms?

The fusion industry has already purchased optics, architectural services, high-purity materials, fuel systems, software packages, plasma diagnostics, machined parts, and large vacuum chambers from WNY firms. This is an entirely new market—without established sales channels or established suppliers—and WNY firms must engage with it. Otherwise, much of this job growth will occur in other states, cities, and regions.

What is the Growth Potential?

The San Diego Economic Development Corporation projected that fusion energy could create 40,000 jobs and $125 billion in economic impact for just the state of California. The MIT Energy Initiative estimated that fusion energy could create at least $3.6 trillion in economic value between 2030 and the end of this century. These projections have prompted states such as New Jersey, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Washington, and California, among others, to pass and sign legislation targeting the fusion energy industry and its associated supply chain. Germany announced a $2.4 billion national plan to support fusion in the fall of 2025, and Japan announced a plan to spend $20.7 billion over 14 years in June 2026. In 2026, ARPA-E increased fusion-specific spending to $135 million in grants and other awards. As of this writing, the American Fusion Leadership Act, which is being developed in the U.S. House of Representatives, calls for $10 billion to support fusion development across the United States.

WNY Must Get Organized
If Western New York does not get organized, we will miss this market, and more of our talent will have to leave this region for these fusion jobs, elsewhere. As of this writing, more than 750 fusion energy jobs are posted on Fusion Energy Base (https://www.fusionenergybase.com/jobs) but many of these positions are in Boston, Seattle, and California. This talk will link the products and services that Western New York businesses already produce to the emerging needs of the fusion energy sector. It will provide a map to these potential customers and identify key needs across the industry. At least a dozen new product niches are being created by fusion, including:

1. Customized manufactured targets for laser experiments
2. Mass-produced ceramic tapes and insulators for superconductors and superconducting magnets
3. High-precision optics for laser facilities currently under construction
4. Large, custom-designed, machined vacuum chambers
5. Machined parts for fusion subsystems
6. High-voltage hardware, including switches, transmission lines, capacitors, pulsed-power units, and related equipment
7. Architectural services for the design of fusion facilities
8. Specialized plasma diagnostics, including streak cameras, Langmuir probes, and other instruments
9. Electropolishing support services for superconducting tapes
10. High-purity powders and forged materials for specialized components
11. Laser diodes and subsystems for laser facilities
12. Software for plasma modeling, digital twins, systems controls, and related applications
13. Diagnostics for characterizing laser-fusion targets
14. Tritium-handling hardware and licensing services
15. Production of high-purity lithium-6 and lithium-7 for breeder blankets in both fusion and fission

Manufacturing and supplying these and other components represent a major opportunity for WNY firms to grow their customer base, expand their product offerings.

Wait... Fusion Energy...!?

Nuclear fusion has long been seen as “30 years away—and always will be.” It offers the world a seemingly endless source of clean, abundant, green energy that has often sounded more like science fiction than science fact. In fact, scientists and engineers around the world have been working on this problem for more than 70 years. Over the last 10–20 years, however, different groups have realized that if these machines were built entirely with superconducting materials, there was an outside possibility that they could produce net power. But two machines—the SPARC reactor outside Boston and the BEST reactor under construction in China—could be the first machines in human history to produce net power when they become operational. This has sparked a wave of interest in fusion energy, spin-off technologies, supply-chain components, and defense applications from pension funds, venture capitalists, technologists, government officials, military organizations, and others. In our current investment landscape, rightly or wrongly, fusion energy has also increasingly come to be viewed as a “picks-and-shovels” play on AI investment.

Wait, Really?

Yes, really - and our region is already way behind - below are just some of the recent fusion events that have been taking place around America.

• SF Fusion Opportunities Workshop - DC - June 2026
• MIT AM for Fusion Meeting - Aug 27 to September 2, 2026
• IFE @ SLAC Workshop - last week of August 2026
• Columbia Fusion Mini-Course - June 17 & 18, 2026
• CATF Fusion Regulatory Workshop - TN - July 29th, 2026
• Colorado Fusion Week - July 13th to 15th, 2026
• California Fusion Convening - Nov 13, 2025
• 6th Seattle Fusion Week - September '26
• Fusion Supply Chain event - DC- July '26
• Fusion Fest in the UK - September '26
• Reuters Fusion Event - Boston- October 6th and 7th 2026
• Fusion X @ MIT - May '26
• Economist Fusion Event - UK - Spring '26
• University of Arizona Fusion Symposium - 9/15
• Virginia Fusion Symposium - College of W&M - 10/16
• UK Fusion Summit in London - 9/15
• ARPA-E Fusion Proposers Conference - 9/27 & 9/28
• IAEA Fusion Commercialization Event - Quebec - Dec 26
• First ever International Fusion Law Conference - Germany

We are reaching the point where ther is literally a fusion energy related conference or meeting every week of the year.

Presenter

Dr. Matthew Moynihan is the Author of Fusion’s Promise (Nature-Springer, 2023) and has been involved in the fusion community since 2006. He worked as a Staff Scientist and Deputy Program Manager at the University of Rochester Laboratory for Laser Energetics and was a Senior Nuclear Engineer for the US Navy working on the licensing of new fission reactors for submarines. In 2018, he founded Fusion Consultants LLC, a boutique consulting firm helping investors assess fusion startups for risk. He was the US consultant on the 2023 and 2024 European Commission Reports on private fusion and sat on the public-private partnership committee for the 2022 Department of Energy Basic Research Needs Report (BRN) for Inertial Fusion Energy. His firm has been a member of the Fusion Industry Association since 2020, and he is an active member of the Government Relations, Space and Supply Chain committees. He holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Rochester (2013); his thesis was on techniques to mass produce wetted foam shells for the National Ignition Facility. He lives in Pittsford, New York with his wife Alison and their two boys.