Greg Twinney, CEO of General Fusion, explains how the LM26 device works, in Richmond, B.C., in May, 2025.Jennifer Gauthier/The Globe and Mail
Fourteen months ago, General Fusion Inc. cut staff, reduced operations and published an open letter from chief executive officer Greg Twinney urging financiers to help secure the future of the cash-strapped Richmond, B.C., company.
Now, the fusion energy developer is set to start life as a public company with enough money to complete a key step in what has so far been a 24-year quest to bring a fully functioning futuristic power plant to market. The question, which it will answer this week, is exactly how much money that will take.
In January, General Fusion struck a deal to go public by merging with a Nasdaq-listed special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, called Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. III (SVAIII). SPACs are publicly traded shell companies that seek to combine with operating entities. On Monday, SVAIII shareholders approved the deal. It’s set to close on Friday, after which the combined company will be renamed General Fusion Group Ltd. and trade under the ticker symbol GFUZ.
General Fusion is one of a spate of Canadian companies to test the public markets this year, after Apotex Health Corp. APTX-T, AGT Food and Ingredients Inc. AGTF-T and Lumina Metals Corp. LMCU-T It’s one of three, including Xanadu Quantum Technologies Inc. XNDU-T and Uni Express Inc. (UniUni), to pursue a SPAC combination.
While conventional initial public offerings must contend with uncertain market conditions, SPAC deals come with their own wild-card dynamic. SVAIII raised US$230-million from investors before they knew what combination it would transact. After presenting General Fusion as its partner, SVAIII investors had the option to redeem the US$10 a unit paid, a typical feature of SPACs. That deadline was July 1, but the results will only be shared publicly Friday. Whatever isn’t redeemed will go to the combined company.
B.C.’s General Fusion to go public with SPAC deal
Some SPAC deals have sailed through with barely any redemptions. It’s been a different story with others, particularly when the SPAC units traded below the issue price predeal. The SPAC that merged with Xanadu saw nearly 90 per cent of unitholders redeem their investments beforehand. The remaining proceeds – US$27-million – barely covered half the deal costs. Redemptions were even higher when another Canadian-founded quantum computer developer, D-Wave Quantum Inc. QBTS-N, did its SPAC merger in 2022.
Mr. Twinney said in a mid-June interview that he hoped for a much better outcome. He said the fact that SVAIII stock had consistently traded above US$10 a unit recently “is positive, though how much that influenced redemptions, I don’t know. We’re working hard to communicate that we’ve got some fantastic progress in front of us. I’m hoping shareholders see the value still to be created.”
And while Xanadu came to market in a crowded field of quantum developers (and later traded up), the only other fusion developer going public is TAE Technologies Inc., which has agreed to merge with Trump Media & Technology Group Corp., owner of the Truth Social site and majority-owned by U.S. President Donald Trump. Those parties are targeting completion after Oct. 1. That makes General Fusion the first and, for now, only public fusion-focused developer.
Even if SVAIII investors were to fully redeem, General Fusion will still emerge with ample cash. After its 2025 callout, General Fusion raised US$88-million from private investors, bringing its total funding to date to US$400-million. That includes US$100-million-plus from governments.
Plus, General Fusion also raised US$108-million from an oversubscribed private investment accompanying the SPAC deal, a common feature of such transactions. Regardless of SPAC redemptions, that private funding, called a PIPE, is General Fusion’s to keep when the combination closes.
Lining up the PIPE “was imperative,” Mr. Twinney said. “Nobody can count on the SPAC trust, so we needed to get adequate PIPE capital. That’s what we did.”
That PIPE money, he said, will provide enough to fund operations through the end of 2028 and complete key development work on the company’s fusion demonstration device. This would enable General Fusion to achieve what it calls scientific break-even – the point beyond which the machine would produce more energy than it takes in if loaded with the appropriate fuel mix.
The test machine is not designed to generate electricity but to serve as a precursor to a full-scale fusion reactor General Fusion hopes to put into operation by 2035. Mr. Twinney wouldn’t say how much getting to full commercialization will cost, but added the 124-person company has spent “an order of magnitude less capital to get where we are versus others.”
General Fusion was founded in 2002 by physicist Michel Laberge, who sought to revive an approach to nuclear fusion shelved in the 1970s. The method, which differs from those used by other companies, involves using a metal sheath to momentarily contain and then rapidly compress plasma to reach the temperatures and pressures needed to initiate fusion reactions.
Efforts to develop fusion power into a commercially viable form of electricity production are in the early stages, but interest has picked up. Companies in the sector raised US$2.6-billion in 2025, according to the Fusion Industry Association.