Tokamak Energy

On April 14, 2026 Tokamak Energy is confirmed as Magnet Systems Partner for STEP, the UK government's prototype fusion power plant at West Burton, under a £70M contract running to March 2029 covering eight work packages with UK Fusion Energy. The deal also gives STEP access to ST40 for testing magnetic configurations and plasma scenarios, and makes Tokamak Energy the UK's only specialist manufacturer of high-field HTS magnet technology.

On April 29, 2026 Tokamak Energy publishes a study showing HTS busway could cut power losses in data-center power distribution by up to 90%, lifting system efficiency from around 90% to about 99% in a modeled 10 MW data center and freeing up to 9% more IT capacity from the same electrical supply - a new non-fusion application for the TE Magnetics HTS platform.

On May 6, 2026 Tokamak Energy, stellarator developer Type One Energy and engineering firm AECOM form the UK Infinity Fusion Consortium to pursue the first private-sector-led commercial fusion power plant project in Britain.

In June 2026 Tokamak Energy and Japan's Furukawa Electric Group advance their collaboration toward building high-temperature superconducting tape manufacturing capability in the UK, addressing the supply bottleneck behind every HTS fusion magnet program.

Lancaster University opens the Lancaster University Nuclear Operations Simulator, a 2 million pound, Office for Students-funded facility that recreates Tokamak Energy's ST40 control room and runs the company's SOPHIA fusion simulation software alongside pressurized-water-reactor and small-modular-reactor code from GSE Solutions, Westinghouse and Norway's Institute for Energy Technology. It is described as the UK's first reconfigurable nuclear operations training simulator spanning fission and fusion, and opens for teaching from the 2026-2027 academic year.

On July 29, 2026 the high-power gyrotron fuel-heating system passes site acceptance testing ahead of installation on the upgraded ST40, one of the last major pieces of the DOE/DESNZ upgrade programme before experiments restart.

On August 18, 2026 Tokamak Energy publishes an 11-paper Focus Collection in Nuclear Fusion covering plasma physics, engineering systems and the ST-E1 fusion pilot-plant design, grown out of the US Department of Energy's Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program. In the same announcement the company says it will not go on to construct that plant, positioning the papers as a design and systems-integration contribution while its commercial path runs through HTS magnets, ST40 and partner programmes such as STEP.

Tokamak Energy acquires Ridgway Machines, a UK manufacturer of coil-winding and electrical-equipment machinery, to bring superconducting magnet manufacturing capacity in-house and accelerate the growth of its TE Magnetics business.

On October 7, 2025 Tokamak Energy and Gauss Fusion, a stellarator-focused fusion industrialization company, sign a strategic collaboration covering HTS magnet design development, integration and testing support, and the path to commercial scale - part of a wider pan-European industrial push to strengthen the continent's supply chain for fusion magnet technology.

On October 9, 2025 Tokamak Energy's U.S. subsidiary, Tokamak Energy Inc., is selected for the Department of Energy's $128M Fusion Innovative Research Engine (FIRE) Collaboratives initiative, advising on eight projects with U.S. national labs and universities and helping develop advanced HTS tape designed to withstand neutron irradiation as part of a University of Houston-led project.

On October 21, 2025 Tokamak Energy is contracted by General Atomics to provide simulation, design and fabrication of HTS magnets for DARPA's Principles of Undersea Magnetohydrodynamic Pumps (PUMP) programme, which aims to propel submarines silently with no rotating parts. General Atomics handles system integration and prime contractor HRL Laboratories develops the electrode technology; delivered through TE Magnetics, it is the division's first publicly disclosed defense-sector contract.

On November 4, 2025 Tokamak Energy and Saudi Arabia's King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology sign an international strategic partnership at Riyadh's Future Investment Initiative, covering joint fusion and HTS training and education, collaborative R&D and conceptual design work, and HTS applications for power distribution.

In November 2025 Demo4, a full HTS magnet system of 44 coils, reaches 11.8 tesla with seven million ampere turns at cryogenic temperatures - the first time an HTS magnet system has reproduced fusion-relevant magnetic environments at system level rather than in a single coil.

The December 2025 campaign ends with ST40's highest plasma current (1 mega-amp, up from 0.85 MA), close to double its previous stored energy, and a fusion triple product up more than 30% to roughly 8 (±2) x 10^18 m^-3 keV s. ST40 then enters the DOE/DESNZ-funded upgrade shutdown that runs through most of 2026.

Tokamak Energy carves out TE Magnetics in September 2024 to sell HTS magnet systems into fusion, power distribution, propulsion, medical and analytical-science markets, then raises $125M in November led by East X Ventures and Lingotto Investment Management to commercialize both the fusion and magnet businesses.

The U.S. Department of Energy, the UK's Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and Tokamak Energy agree to fund a $52M, five-year upgrade of the privately owned ST40 in equal thirds, adding lithium wall conditioning, all-metal plasma-facing components and radiofrequency heating to study conditions relevant to future power plants.

ST40 reaches an ion temperature above 100 million degrees Celsius, the threshold for commercial fusion conditions and a first for a privately owned and operated tokamak.

ST40, the company's compact high-field spherical tokamak, comes online at the Oxfordshire campus and becomes the machine the rest of the roadmap is calibrated against.

The ST25-HTS, the world's first tokamak with magnets built entirely from high-temperature superconductors, runs a 29-hour continuous plasma, validating HTS magnets in a working tokamak.

Founded at Culham as a spin-out of the UK Atomic Energy Authority to commercialize the combination of compact spherical tokamaks and high-temperature superconducting magnets.