"An oil and gas giant signed a $1 billion deal with Commonwealth Fusion Systems" (and Deng Xiaoping does a driveby)

If/when fusion derived electricity first becomes commercially viable, it will have "Chinese characteristics."*

From MIT Technology Review, September 22:

The power purchase agreement makes Eni the second major customer for Commonwealth’s first commercial fusion power plant. 

Eni, one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, just agreed to buy $1 billion in electricity from a power plant being built by Commonwealth Fusion Systems. The deal is the latest to illustrate just how much investment Commonwealth and other fusion companies are courting as they attempt to take fusion power from the lab to the power grid. 

“This is showing in concrete terms that people that use large amounts of energy, that know the energy market—they want fusion power, and they’re willing to contract for it and to pay for it,” said Bob Mumgaard, cofounder and CEO of Commonwealth, on a press call about the deal.   

The agreement will see Eni purchase electricity from Commonwealth’s first commercial fusion power plant, in Virginia. The facility is still in the planning stages but is scheduled to come online in the early 2030s.

The news comes a few weeks after Commonwealth announced a $863 million funding round, bringing its total funding raised to date to nearly $3 billion. The fusion company also announced earlier this year that Google would be its first commercial power customer for the Virginia plant.

Commonwealth, a spinout from MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, is widely considered one of the leading companies in fusion power. Investment in the company represents nearly one-third of the total global investment in private fusion companies. (MIT Technology Review is owned by MIT but is editorially independent.)....

....MUCH MORE
*A bow to the man who lifted 800 million of his fellow Chinese out of abject poverty:

 

"Socialism with Chinese characteristics" 
—Deng Xiaoping, 1982

 

From CGTN, the English-language channel of state-run China Global Television Network:

Over the past four decades, the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics has led China to

remarkable achievements. China's gross domestic product (GDP) grew from $149.54 billion in

1978 to $14,342.9 billion in 2019, while its GDP per capita rose from $156 to $10,262....  

And if one is interested, here is a short explication of Deng's thinking via Marxists.org:

Deng Xiaoping 
Building a Socialism With a Specifically Chinese Character 
1984 

Deng's abbreviated version was later referred to as "Cat Theory." From his 1962 speech, "Restore Agricultural Production": 

...Comrade Liu Bocheng often quotes a Sichuan proverb — 
“It does not matter if it is a yellow cat or a black cat, as long as it catches mice.”

And fusion? Ambrose Evans-Pritchard at The Telegraph, September 23, 2025:

The ultimate American nightmare: China is winning the fusion energy race
Beijing’s Manhattan Project promises to obliterate the existing global energy order

China is moving at lightning speed to secure a stranglehold over the industrial supply chain of nuclear fusion, aiming to leapfrog the US as the technology advances from theoretical science to actual power for the grid.

The Communist Party has launched what amounts to a Manhattan Project to dominate the next stage of fusion, which promises to start sweeping away the existing energy order much sooner than is widely understood.

Beijing is replicating the same strategy it used to wipe out global rivals in solar panels, lithium batteries, critical minerals and electric vehicles.

“China’s rise in fusion poses an existential threat to US energy dominance,” said Will Regan, founder of the US start-up Pacific Fusion.

Regan said China had deployed upwards of $10bn (£7bn) to $13bn since 2023 in a systematic attempt to capture the family of specialist industries that will underpin the rollout of fusion power plants at scale.

That figure is more than the rest of the world combined over the same period – probably by a large margin.

“Their facilities are so big you can literally see them from space,” said Bob Mumgaard, the chief executive of Commonwealth Fusion, the West’s frontrunner in commercial fusion.

“We are hearing reports that they are working 24 hours a day with interns sleeping in cots. This is a coordinated, state-organised intention to win the fusion race,” he said. 

*****

Mumgaard warned the US Congress that China’s ambitions are becoming a clear and present danger to US economic and national security.

“This is a very high-stakes race worth trillions of dollars. China is positioned to win; the US isn’t,” he said.

Mumgaard said the Chinese were pouring money on a massive scale into all the foundational structures of an active fusion industry.

“The US has nothing like this. Our fusion programme looks like it did a decade ago. It’s fragmented, underfunded and ill-equipped and still focused on science,” he said.

He was speaking last week at a shocking but sparsely attended session in Congress on the fusion race. The mood was in stark contrast to the heady triumphalism of the Pujiang Innovation Forum in Shanghai happening at much the same time.

Prof Zhang Jie, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said his country was fast developing a form of inertial laser fusion at a vast new facility in Sichuan that was 30 times more efficient than its US rival and promised to deliver baseload power at circa $25 per megawatt hour.

Such a level – if achieved – would obliterate all competition in global energy and establish China as the hegemonic electro-superpower.

Prof Zhang, China’s “Dr Fusion”, said the technology would drastically change the international order and lead to an economic upheaval that surpassed all three industrial revolutions seen so far – mechanical, electrical and digital.

China’s leaders were stunned when the Lawrence Livermore laboratory in California announced in December 2022 that it had achieved ignition, generating more energy from fusing hydrogen isotopes than it put in to set off the reaction.

The lab has since repeated this eight times and reached an energy gain ratio of 4.1, as well as a “self-sustaining feedback loop” known as burning plasma.

Regan said Beijing had instantly grasped the significance of the breakthrough and had since mobilised the full apparatus of the Chinese state to surpass it.

“They are now close to operating a facility that could produce up to 10 times more yield: an enormous capability gap,” he said.

China is also going hell for leather on the more traditional fusion technology using ultra-strength magnets.

In January its Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (East) contained burning plasma at temperatures above 100 million degrees for a record 17.7 minutes, catching up with the West in what some are already calling a Sputnik moment....

....MUCH MORE 

And MIT Technology Review, July 8, 2025:

Why the US and Europe could lose the race for fusion energy

The lack of essential supply chains and process technologies necessary to commercialize fusion energy could doom the US and European countries in capturing the critical geopolitical prize.

So far this year:

• "China's 'artificial sun' shatters nuclear fusion record by generating steady loop of plasma for 1,000 seconds"
• China Building Huge Laser Fusion Research Facility, Analysts Say
• Nuclear Fusion: "France tops China’s tokamak record with 22-minute plasma containment run"

And previously:

• February 2016 - "That's cute, Germany – China shows the world how fusion is done"
• December 2019 - And Speaking of Fusion, China Is Close To Turning On Their "Artificial Sun"
• May 2021 - "China’s “Artificial Sun” Fusion Reactor Just Set a World Record" 

Possibly also of interest:

May 2023 - Electrical Generation: China’s Jiangxi Province To Build A Fusion-Fission Reactor

For now, I'll believe it when I see it. But the scientists seem to have convinced the people with the money it is doable. 

December 2023 - Meanwhile in France: Recreating The Sun In Provence