NovaFusion

NovaFusion (诺瓦聚变) is a Chinese private nuclear fusion startup — the country's first company focused on small, distributed FRC-SMR (field-reversed configuration, small modular reactor) fusion technology, founded and led by Guo Houyang, an American Physical Society fellow and pioneer inventor of the FRC-SMR modular approach with experience across both FRC and tokamak routes. Its fundraising pace has been the sector's standout story: a record 500 million yuan angel round in August 2025, followed by a 700 million yuan angel+ round in April 2026, and then a 1.2 billion yuan Pre-A announced on August 31, 2026 — making it, per Yunqi Capital's writeup, the first "decacorn" (百亿独角兽) among China's private fusion companies, with Meituan Longzhu and Hillhouse doubling down and Legend Capital and Guozhong Capital joining as new strategic investors. The capital is going toward the "Nova One" verification device, already in engineering build-out, with an aggressive roadmap: first plasma by end-2026, 100 million degrees in 2027 (a first for a Chinese private company), Q>1 net energy by 2029, and a 50–100MW small distributed demo plant in the early 2030s — pitched squarely at round-the-clock power for AI data centers under its "Fusion for AI & Beyond" vision.