Fremont, Calif.-based Pacific Fusion broke ground in Albuquerque, N.M. for its $1 billion fusion research and manufacturing campus Tuesday morning.
The fusion company plans to build a fusion facility at the campus that will contain its demonstration fusion system, which is hoped to achieve net facility gain by 2030, according to Pacific Fusion’s Tuesday press release. Pacific Fusion selected the Albuquerque site in October 2025.
To celebrate the groundbreaking for Pacific Fusion’s new fusion campus, the company held a groundbreaking ceremony where a range of government officials spoke, including the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Brandon Williams and Sens. Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.) and John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.).
Pacific Fusion Chief Technology Officer Keith LeChien said during the company’s ceremony that its efforts to bring fusion to fruition come at an important time when China is making a large investment in fusion energy.
LeChien continued to say that where fusion is today is where commercial space technology was 20 years ago and emphasized that public-private partnerships with the government are needed to move fusion technology forward.
With fusion technology in the United States not expected to become commercial until the mid 2030s, Pacific Fusion seeks to position itself to use its fusion capabilities for both commercial and defense purposes.
Emphasizing the company’s focus on national security uses, Pacific Fusion and NNSA signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on “high-yield fusion, high-energy-density science, and related technical areas,” according to the release.
Williams said that the investment from DOE’s national labs and the government helped provide a foundation to fusion technology.
“This is what public-private partnership looks like,” Williams said during the ceremony. “Decades of investment being married with this innovation. It’s exactly what Senator Lujan said, ‘this is for America.’”