Missed Deadlines, Broken Promises

January 26, 2026

"If we had a 20-year project, we would never get the money"

In 2012 CEO Doug Richardson said, in an article promoted on the General Fusion website at the time:

"If we had a 20-year project, we would never get the money. But we're promising to demonstrate a net energy gain in five years, and we're meeting our milestones"

...14 years later, no net energy gain. In fact, just last year General Fusion promised to achieve the less impressive feat of reaching fusion conditions in 2025. Another failure. Now they want you to invest on the basis that they claim they will deliver electricity to the grid in the 2030's... It sounds like a con.

Fusion is always 30 years away

In a 2023 Journal of Fusion Energy article researchers analysed estimates of "how many years away is fusion?". They erroneously concluded that because estimates have fallen over recent years, progress is being made. The authors neglected something far more prosaic: companies have simply figured out that 10 years is the sweet spot...

A 10-year horizon is short enough to trick unwary investors into thinking they might make a return on their investment soon, whilst also being long enough to convince them that there's time to achieve the fusion goal (it's not long enough, more on this in a separate article). More importantly 10 years gives enough time for fund managers, journalists and politicians to move into other roles and collectively forget the old promises. With no one holding them to account the fusion companies just recycle the same old lies with a fresh bunch of suckers. Now they're trying it on with you, the public, by listing on the stock market.

Lawson Machine 26 Late Machine 2028

Most recently General Fusion have failed to deliver on their 'Lawson Machine 26' target of demonstrating scientific breakeven by 2026. The machine was "designed to be cost-efficient and produce results quickly". Yet, no notable results have been forthcoming*. Unsurprisingly, the deadline has slipped: General Fusion now say they are aiming to reach breakeven in 2028. There is no word on when they plan to reach the intermediate goal of attaining fusion conditions (having failed to deliver on their earlier 2025 goal).

This is not a one-off...

_{* General Fusion said they "will work closely with the UK Atomic Energy Authority to validate the data gathered from LM26" so we reached out to both General Fusion and the UK Atomic Energy Authority to see if they had any validated results to share with us; none were provided.}

"Clean, safe and economical fusion energy by the end of 2004"

General Fusion have been consistently failing to deliver on their promises of fusion energy for over 20 years. This handy graphic shows promises made as far back as 2003. A clear trend emerges: promise fusion in a few years' time, fail to deliver, make same promise in a bid to fleece investors of more money, rinse investors and repeat. We'll let you decide if General Fusion is seriously going to deliver energy to the grid by the 2030s.

Graph showing predicted delivery date as a function of date predication was made

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