by JIANG Xi
Shanghai has stepped up its push into commercial nuclear fusion, with a local start-up securing a record fundraising round as the city moves to deploy long-term capital into one of the world's most capital-intensive and technically challenging energy technologies.
Startorus Fusion, a Shanghai-based commercial nuclear fusion start-up spun out of research at Tsinghua University, has completed a 1 billion yuan funding round, people familiar with the matter told Jiemian News, the largest financing raised by a privately owned fusion company in China so far this year.
The round was led by Shanghai state-owned investors, including Shanghai Science & Technology Venture Capital Group and the Shanghai Future‑oriented Industries Fund, with participation from other financial and strategic backers.
Startorus Fusion said it had reached a strategic cooperation agreement with the Jiading district government in Shanghai and would establish its main research and experimental base there.
Founded in 2021, Startorus Fusion is pursuing a spherical tokamak approach, a compact variant of the tokamak design that proponents say could improve magnetic efficiency and lower engineering costs. In late 2024, the company said it had completed initial engineering validation on its SUNIST-2 device and was preparing to build NTST, a negative-triangularity spherical tokamak that would be the first of its kind globally if successful.
The company said it is now working toward achieving a fusion energy gain factor above one, a key technical milestone in fusion research, and aims to complete core engineering validation before the end of the decade.
The funding comes as Shanghai steps up efforts to back fusion and other frontier technologies with long-term state capital. The Shanghai Future-oriented Industries Fund, launched in 2024 with full municipal backing, started with 10 billion yuan and expanded to 15 billion yuan in 2025, with a 15-year investment horizon.
Beyond Startorus Fusion, Shanghai has been building out upstream suppliers and experimental capacity to support multiple fusion approaches in parallel. Shanghai Superconductor Technology supplies second-generation high-temperature superconducting materials used in fusion devices and high-field magnets, while Yixi Technology, spun out of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, focuses on high-field superconducting magnets.
Shanghai-based teams are also pursuing different reactor designs. While Startorus Fusion focuses on spherical tokamaks, Energy Singularity is developing fully high-temperature superconducting tokamaks, and Honghu Fusion is exploring the stellarator route. Fuel strategies vary, with Dongsheng Fusion working on deuterium–helium-3 fusion, while Shanghai Electric is collaborating with the ENN Energy Research Institute on hydrogen–boron fusion.
Despite the recent surge in investment, fusion energy is still widely seen as a long-term prospect, with large-scale commercial deployment unlikely in the near term. How quickly recent capital inflows translate into engineering progress remains an open question.