Fusion, Deep Tech, and Who Owns Which Handover?

Who owns the work between invention and use?

Money is flowing into fusion. Companies are advancing experiments, developing components, securing sites, building industrial partnerships and announcing future demand.

But these activities do not automatically add up to a commercially usable system.

Between scientific progress and industrial operation lies a series of handovers. Experimental results must become engineering specifications. Components must fit an integrated plant. The plant must fit a site. The site must connect to infrastructure. Suppliers, utilities, regulators and prospective customers must make decisions on timelines they do not fully control.

This industry report examines who performs that connecting work, where responsibility sits and how progress in one part of the undertaking can reopen decisions elsewhere.

Inside the report

The analysis follows eight publicly described fusion arrangements involving:

• Proxima Fusion
• Focused Energy
• Marvel Fusion
• Gauss Fusion
• Commonwealth Fusion Systems
• Helion
• UKFE and STEP
• Renaissance Fusion

The cases show different approaches to research transfer, whole-plant engineering, industrial partnerships, site development, infrastructure access and future demand.

The report also compares fusion with three other deep tech settings:

• TSMC and Amkor in semiconductor fabrication, packaging and testing
• LanzaTech’s gas-fermentation technology in the Steelanol project
• IBM’s quantum-computing partnership with Cleveland Clinic

These comparisons reveal a wider commercialisation problem.

Technical capability becomes industrially useful only when it fits a specific production process, infrastructure system or institutional environment.

Key questions explored

• What does a handover transfer besides hardware?
• How can downstream requirements reopen upstream engineering decisions?
• What happens when customer demand, plant development and infrastructure access advance on different timelines?
• Who carries the cost of waiting when another organisation controls the unresolved dependency?
• Where does the capability to repeat a component or replicate an installation actually accumulate?
• How does this change the conventional startup narrative of disruption and scale?

Four qualitative scenarios examine how component improvements, changing host conditions, mismatched production capacity and evolving applications can alter a commercialisation route.

What is included

• 13-page industry report
• Eight fusion case analyses
• Three cross-sector deep tech comparisons
• Four qualitative commercialisation scenarios
• Open research questions
• 51 references

Who this report is for

The report is written for investors, industrial partners, corporate strategy teams, policymakers, programme owners and deep tech leaders who need to understand the industrial undertaking around a technology, rather than viewing commercialisation through the venture alone.

The cases illustrate technological and organisational interdependence. They are not company rankings, endorsements or predictions of commercial success.

Witte, M. K. (2026). Fusion, Deep Tech, and Who Owns Which Handover? Independent industry report, 13 September 2026. Arise Innovations®, Berlin, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22737489