The US raised €7.38bn ($8.4bn) in funding for fusion energy between 2022 and 2025 with China in second place with €6.94bn and the EU third with €3.34bn, according to Fusion for Energy (F4E).

Barcelona-based F4E, the European Union’s organisation for the development of fusion energy, said in its Global Fusion Energy Trends report that €4.97bn of the US total was from public funding and €2.41bn from private capital.

China had the largest estimated public total at €5.45bn with approximately €3.73bn of the country’s public funding coming through support to state-controlled commercial entities.

Of the EU’s €3.34bn, €2.12bn was in the form of in-kind procurement for the €22bn International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (Iter) project at Cadarache in southern France.