Star Ring Energy Closes RMB 500 Million Series A+ Round, Bringing Total Funding to Over RMB 2 Billion | Unity Ventures Portfolio News
Global Fusion Commercialization Accelerates as China's Contenders Rise
Recently, Unity Ventures portfolio company Star Ring Energy (星环聚能) completed a RMB 500 million Series A+ funding round. Investors in this round include Fortune Venture Capital, GP Capital, Shanghai Shenergy Chengyi, Sunshine Insurance Ronghui Capital, Xingzheng Capital, Songqing Capital, Hongtai APlus, Sanyuan Capital, Jingming Capital, Yinggang Capital, and others, with Series A investor Feitu Capital continuing to participate. To date, the company has raised over RMB 2 billion in total funding. Unity Ventures was Star Ring Energy's angel round investor.
This round closed quickly after the January 2026 Series A (RMB 1 billion, led by Shanghai state capital). The proceeds will continue to support the company's core engineering priorities: construction of the Shanghai Jiading experimental base, installation and operation of the NTST (Negative Triangularity Spherical Tokamak), continued iteration of the CTRFR-1 (Star Ring No. 1) design, and engineering translation of key technologies including fusion-reactor-grade high-temperature superconducting magnet finalization and AI plasma control.
Three Generations of Devices Running in Parallel, Key Milestones on Track
Star Ring Energy is currently advancing three generations of devices simultaneously through an "operation—construction—R&D" system: SUNIST-2 in operation (in collaboration with Tsinghua University), NTST under construction, and CTRFR-1 in R&D. Since the Series A funding closed, the company's core engineering priorities have continued on schedule.
Shanghai Jiading Experimental Base Accelerating Construction. Star Ring Energy's Shanghai experimental base is located in Xuhang Town, Jiading District, covering approximately 25 mu (about 1.67 hectares) with a total building area of 50,000 square meters. It is planned with three functional zones: a device hall, research and manufacturing facilities, and supporting services. The construction pace has set a new "Jiading Speed" record: on April 10, 2026, the project obtained its pile foundation construction permit within 24 hours of land acquisition, becoming another key industrial project in Jiading this year to achieve "land acquisition and immediate groundbreaking." The base is scheduled to complete the main device hall structure in the second half of 2026, with full completion and commissioning in 2027, at which point it will become a leading domestic platform for fusion energy R&D and engineering validation.
Shanghai Experimental Base Rendering
Shanghai Experimental Base Aerial View
NTST Device Installation Imminent. The core components of the NTST device main body (vacuum vessel, cryostat, structural components, and coils) have all been contracted to manufacturing partners, with relevant agreements signed. Coil winding and coil case fabrication have fully transitioned to batch production; final process plans for key components such as the vacuum vessel and cryostat have been confirmed, and required raw materials have begun arriving on site, with overall project progress proceeding steadily and orderly. Once the device hall is completed, the NTST — the world's first negative triangularity spherical tokamak — will be installed immediately, with installation and commissioning planned for completion in 2026 and operation at rated parameters in 2027.
TF Coils After Casing
NTST Toroidal Field Magnet Cryostat Test
Magnets and Control Systems Advancing in Tandem. The company has established full-process R&D and manufacturing capabilities for high-temperature superconducting magnets. Its self-developed TFMC (toroidal field coil) reaches a maximum size of 4 meters, at full fusion-reactor scale (not a scaled-down model) — the world's first high-temperature superconducting toroidal field magnet designed for a spherical tokamak. Unlike high-temperature superconducting magnets for conventional tokamak configurations, spherical tokamaks impose extreme spatial compression at the center column, requiring several times higher engineering current density; the TFMC was designed and manufactured specifically for this extreme engineering requirement, with significantly higher technical difficulty than conventional configurations. The companion CSMC (central solenoid coil) is progressing in parallel, with both now in final testing and finalization stages.
Meanwhile, deep learning-based intelligent plasma diagnostic monitoring systems and AI control algorithms continue to iterate, having preliminarily achieved isoflux control capability — a leap from 0D global parameter control to 1D fine distribution control. Through a "domain expert + AI Agent collaboration" model, the company's R&D team completed three diagnostic tasks in approximately one week: magnetic probe signal completion (R²≈0.97), AXUV anomaly detection (accuracy 86%→98%), and IDS anomaly detection (precision approaching 100%). R&D hours were compressed from approximately 200 hours to about 34 hours, a roughly 6x improvement, without relying on large-scale historical training data, producing readable physics model code — marking a milestone achievement for AI Agent integration into the company's R&D workflow.
TFMC Toroidal Field Coil
AXUV Anomaly Detection
Star Ring Electronics Commercialization Delivering Results. Suzhou Star Ring Energy Technology Co., Ltd. (Star Ring Electronics) focuses on fusion core electronic and electrical products, independently developing and commercializing products around the engineering requirements of SUNIST-2 and NTST. It has now established three product lines:
Pulsed Power Supplies: kA-class modules with arbitrary series-parallel stacking, featuring current control capability above 1 kA/ms and 10 kHz response speed, supporting AI plasma control; Signal Conditioning Equipment: high-bandwidth isolation amplifiers, standard isolation amplifiers, and analog integrators; Signal Acquisition and Sensing Equipment: the EPIC extreme physics integrated tester, CoaxLink Nano single-channel acquisition unit, and OFDR distributed stress/temperature sensing system. Related products have achieved sales to universities and research institutes, with spillover applications in aerospace, high-end equipment, and other extreme environment measurement scenarios, establishing preliminary self-sustaining revenue capability.
Global Fusion Commercialization Accelerating, Chinese Cohort Rising
Global controlled fusion commercialization is entering a phase of substantive acceleration: international leaders including Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), Helion Energy, TAE Technologies, and Tokamak Energy have all completed multi-hundred-million-dollar funding rounds in recent years, with valuations generally entering the multi-billion-dollar range; domestic fusion investment has simultaneously heated up between 2024 and 2026, with central SOEs, state capital, and leading VC firms entering the sector.
Fusion has transitioned from a "distant scientific dream" to a new industrial phase of "engineering-verifiable, capital-allocable." Star Ring Energy employs a repeating reconnection spherical tokamak technical approach, achieving efficient fusion through the compact configuration of spherical tokamaks combined with repeated magnetic reconnection heating mechanisms; the company simultaneously advances engineering translation of key core technologies including high-temperature superconducting magnets and AI plasma control, progressing toward commercialization with an engineering demonstration reactor as its goal.
CTRFR-1 Cross-Section
Commercialization Roadmap
