The Impact of AI and the Data Center Goldrush on Non-Data Center Construction Costs

China, Fusion Energy

China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), the record-setting “Artificial Sun” in Hefei, is now scheduled to attempt fusion ignition in 2027, a milestone reached only once before, by Lawrence Livermore’s National Ignition Facility in 2022. If successful, EAST would be the first to achieve ignition in a steady-state magnetic confinement device, though Commonwealth Fusion Systems’ SPARC is racing toward the same goal on the same timeline. The Fusion Report breaks down what ignition actually requires (the Lawson Criteria of temperature, density, and confinement time) and assesses how close each machine really is. EAST leads on pathfinding plasma physics while SPARC targets Q > 1, but neither has yet crossed into a self-heating burning plasma. The bigger question: would a 2027 ignition milestone finally ignite broad investor interest across the fusion sector?

Data Centers

With SpaceX freshly public and its stock up 28% over the IPO price, talk of putting AI data centers in orbit is back in the headlines. The Fusion Report looks past the one obvious upside, nearly unlimited solar power in a sun-synchronous orbit, and tallies the costs that doom the idea: $160M to $280M per megawatt just to launch, two-year hardware refresh cycles, dense low-earth-orbit debris, space weather, and the near-impossibility of radiating away server heat in a vacuum. Against a ship-borne data center that fits in a shipping container and cools itself for a fraction of the price, orbital compute simply doesn’t pencil out. The verdict: outside of analyzing data that originates in space, orbital data centers are not a great idea.

Fusion Energy

The Department of Energy released its finalized Fusion Science and Technology Roadmap on June 9, built with input from more than 800 scientists and engineers, targeting commercial fusion by the mid-2030s. The same day, Tennessee became the first state in the nation to regulate fusion machines, clearing a path for Type One Energy’s Infinity Two plant near Oak Ridge. On June 10, DOE approved Xcimer Energy’s 724-page Athena preconceptual power plant design. The Fusion Report also goes deep on Realta Fusion’s Hammir-DT tandem mirror power plant design and Thea Energy’s collaboration with NVIDIA, Synopsys, Argonne, and PPPL to build a digital twin of its Helios stellarator.

Fusion Funding

Helion Energy closed a $465 million Series G led by Thrive Capital at a $15.5 billion post-money valuation, the largest fusion VC round of 2026. The raise brings Helion’s lifetime private funding to $1.5 billion and makes it the second most funded fusion company after Commonwealth Fusion Systems. The capital will expand U.S. manufacturing capacity and support deployment of Orion, the company’s first power plant, now under construction in Malaga, Washington.

Fusion Energy

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is the largest and most expensive fusion machine ever built, with a projected cost of between $20B and $24B and final-stage completion now pushed out to 2039. Meanwhile, commercial machines like Commonwealth Fusion Systems’ ARC are expected to deliver 400 MW of electricity in the early 2030s at a fraction of ITER’s price. The Fusion Report traces ITER’s four decades of international cooperation and schedule slips, compares its progress against NIF’s ignition milestones and EAST’s long-pulse records, and weighs what ITER can still uniquely deliver. The verdict: ITER’s value may now rest on being an insurance policy, one that only pays off if commercial fusion slips.

Fusion Energy

Things You Gotta Know Focused Energy Closes Record $240 Million Series A to Build Germany’s First Laser Fusion Power Plant Focused Energy announced on May 27 that it has raised […]

Electric Vehicles

The new Ferrari Luce is a $640K, 1,035-hp, five-seater sedan that isn’t red, isn’t especially pretty, and isn’t even the fastest EV sedan on the market. So why does it matter? Because when Maranello commits to electrification, the rest of the supercar world has to take EV adoption seriously, and that has knock-on effects for every kilowatt-hour of electricity we’ll need to generate in the decade ahead.

Fusion Energy

The Fusion Report sized up where battery energy storage technology is headed and asked whether the next generation of AI-powered robots will run on fusion. The NRC is moving toward a substantially lighter federal review of fusion, Germany joined the EU’s IPCEI on innovative nuclear technologies for fusion only, Singapore’s A*STAR signed a five-year research pact with CFS, Canada backed a fusion-based copper-67 isotope production project, General Fusion brought on capital markets veteran Thomas Boehlert as it prepares for the public markets, and JT-60SA cleared its upgrade cycle and prepared for restart.