US start-up Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) has inked a five-year collaboration deal with Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology & Research (ASTAR). The agreement targets technologies for commercial fusion power plants, including CFS’s ARC power plants, and positions Singapore as an early entrant into the global fusion energy supply chain.
The agreement builds on an earlier three-way partnership between ASTAR, CFS, and ST Engineering, a leading technology, defence, and engineering group, which produced components for CFS’s SPARC fusion demonstration machine.
Professor Lim Keng Hui, Assistant Chief Executive of ASTAR’s Science & Engineering Research Council, said the partnership draws on Singapore’s strengths in translational research to contribute to real-world fusion systems. He noted that such collaborations help local industry build capabilities in high-value, next-generation manufacturing as fusion moves toward commercial deployment.
CFS CEO and co-founder Bob Mumgaard said Singapore possesses major capabilities in advanced manufacturing and materials engineering, developed across shipbuilding, aerospace, and semiconductor sectors. He said those capabilities would accelerate CFS’s commercialisation journey toward the ARC power plants.
CFS, spun off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2018, is among the leading global startups in the race to commercialise nuclear fusion energy. It has raised about $3bn from prominent investors, including Singapore’s Temasek and Google. Temasek, a global investment company was an early investor in CFS, having been a lead investor in one of the company’s Series A rounds. They also collaborate with ASTAR across areas of research and innovation.
CFS is progressing development work on its planned ARC power plant in Chesterfield County, Virginia, which it expects will begin operation in the early 2030s. In July 2025, Google signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) for 200 MWe from the ARC power plant.
