CATL (Contemporary Amperex Technology), China's and the world's largest battery maker, has made back-to-back investments in fusion startups, jumping into the race for dominance in future energy. As electricity demand surges with the spread of artificial intelligence (AI) services, the move is seen as a long-term strategy to secure next-generation clean energy technology.
According to the Shanghai Securities News on the 4th, CATL recently led the Seed+ investment round for Beta Fusion (贝塔聚变), a Chinese nuclear fusion startup. The report said CATL, after reviewing several Chinese fusion corporations, picked Beta Fusion as its first investment target in the field, leading the company's seed round in June and then its second investment round.
The investment aligns with CATL's strategy to move beyond battery manufacturing and become a "comprehensive energy corporation." CATL has been expanding from electric-vehicle batteries into energy storage systems (ESS), power grids, and data center power supply, and now appears to be adding fusion to its investment targets to secure the future energy supply chain.
CATL Chair Zeng Yuqun said in a previous shareholder letter and media interviews regarding the new energy industry, "We are at a historic turning point from the industrialization of new energy to the new-energy transformation of entire industries," and presented a vision to make CATL "a 'zero-carbon' technology company that contributes to humanity's new-energy development."
Industry officials say fusion energy has drawn major attention recently amid the rapid growth of the AI sector. Generative AI services and data centers consume massive electricity and require stable 24-hour power supply. The global AI race is also expanding from a competition to secure semiconductors to one to secure power. As a result, finding an energy source that emits little carbon while being highly efficient and stable has emerged as a key task in the AI era.
Fusion energy is a technology that recreates on Earth the principle by which the sun generates energy. It is called the "ultimate clean energy" because it can use fuel virtually without limit and emits almost no carbon. Although many technical hurdles remain before commercialization, if successful, it is drawing attention as a next-generation energy source that could meet the AI era's massive power demand. U.S. big tech companies are also rushing to invest in fusion startups.
Beta Fusion, which CATL invested in, is developing the FRC (Field-Reversed Configuration) method, a relatively new fusion technology in China. The company highlights that it can simplify device structures and reduce development expense and timelines compared with existing fusion technologies, and has set a goal to build 50–100 megawatt (MW)-class fusion power plants within 6–8 years to supply electricity to AI data centers. The company says the technology will accelerate the commercialization of fusion energy.
In China, the fusion investment boom has been heating up rapidly. According to ITjuzi, there were 28 investments in China's fusion sector in the first half of this year, totaling more than 7.2 billion yuan (about 1.5154 trillion won). Compared with the first half of last year, the number of deals rose eightfold and the amount invested increased more than 233 times.
The Chinese government is also actively fostering fusion by including it as one of the core areas of future industries in the 15th five-year plan (2026–2030). In June, the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced it had succeeded in domesticating core technology for the key superconducting magnet of a fusion experimental reactor. Qin Jinggang, a researcher at the Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, said, "If we meet the current targets, China could produce its first electricity through Nuclear Fusion Power by 2030, the first in the world."