During the Cold War, the US and the Soviet Union competed in almost every area, including space.

The rivalry changed dramatically on October 4, 1957, when the USSR launched Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite, officially ushering in the space age. Nearly 70 years later, the US faces a new technological race fusion energyand one CEO warns that Washington could be heading for another “Sputnik moment” as China accelerates.

“Fusion is at an inflection point,” Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) CEO Bob Mumgaard told FOX Business. “We have foreign governments that are investing heavily, and we can start to see what the future fusion industry will look like, and it will be a major industry in the world, especially at the intersection with AI.”

“The U.S. government, long a proponent of fusion, is not currently structured to be able to seize the moment and truly lead to energy dominance,” he added.

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President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping stand side by side as they hold a bilateral meeting at Gimhae International Airport on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Busan, South Korea, on October 3. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters/Reuters)

Mumgaard inside China as the main competitor of the US as Beijing increases investment and coordination around fusion energy.

In July, People’s Daily Onlinethe official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), reported that Beijing had launched China Fusion Energy Co. Ltd (CFEC), a subsidiary of China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC). The outlet said the company had a registered capital of 15 billion yuan, or about $2.1 billion.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) noted in October that the development of fusion energy had “entered a decisive new phase”, emphasizing the overall activity of the industry. The agency cited the work of 33 countries and thousands of engineers and scientists who are working together to build a tokamak, a doughnut-shaped magnetic fusion device. The collaboration aims to show “the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale, carbon-free energy source.”

Mumgaard acknowledges that the potential impacts of China winning the fusion energy race are difficult to gauge, as the technology is unlike anything that has ever existed.

“We’ve never had a power source like fusion before,” Mumgaard said. He emphasized that fusion, unlike other energy sources, did not require large amounts of land or underground infrastructure, which made it revolutionary.

“It’s hard to know exactly how this will play out, but it’s a huge technological shift. And China, like any other country that would have fusion, would want to use it to boost its economy,” the CEO added.

East China’s Anhui Province is actively building the Burning Plasma Experimental Superconductor Tokamak BEST in its capital Hefei, which is expected to demonstrate the generation of fusion electricity for the first time in history. (Zhou Mu/Xinhua via Getty Images/Getty Images)

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Mumgaard cautioned that while China has moved aggressively to push fusion development, the US’s own infrastructure has remained largely unchanged.

“You look at China, and estimates are that China has invested between $6 billion and $12 billion to work on fusion in the past two years by building large-scale test beds, facilities, organizing universities and national laboratories and private companies to solve the remaining challenges and build demonstration power plants,” he said. “And the US hasn’t done any of that yet. We have a fusion program that looks like it did when it was in the 1990s, and so we need to modernize that.”

Mumgaard argues that if the US were to modernize its fusion program, it could lead to an industry revolution.

In order to accelerate the US fusion program, Mumgaard suggests that the government look to its past collaborations with the private sector to drive scientific advances, such as work with SpaceX or Operation Warp Speed.

“We think there are some good models here that could be applied to mergers that leverage private equity, and there’s now over $10 billion of private equity in merger companies, but also the experience and the acceleration that the government has shown,” Mumgaard told FOX Business.

A diagram of the SPARC tokamak at the Commonwealth Fusion Systems campus in Devens, Mass., on Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024. (Cassandra Klos/Bloomberg via Getty Images/Getty Images)

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While warning that the US fusion program remains out of date, Mumgaard said US companies are already working to advance the technology.

Mumgaard spoke to FOX Business from Devens, Massachusetts, where Commonwealth Fusion Systems is building the Soonest Possible Advanced Reactor Compact (SPARC), a machine designed to produce more energy than it consumes.

Last year, CFS announced plans to independently finance, build, own and operate a grid-scale fusion power plant in Chesterfield County, Virginia.

“This is a historic moment,” Mumgaard said in one Declaration 2024 announcing the project. “In the early 2030s, all eyes will be on the Richmond region, and more specifically Chesterfield County, Virginia, as the birthplace of commercial fusion power.”

Mumgaard reiterated that early 2030s timeline when he spoke to FOX Business.

For Mumgaard, the clearest sign of whether the US is gaining ground in the race for fusion energy will be tangible results, not just rhetoric.

“The biggest indicator is, ‘Are we starting to build things?'” he said. “‘Are the things we’re building working? Are they working?'”

Bob Mumgaard, co-founder and CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, speaks during the CERAWeek by S&P Global conference in Houston, Texas, on Tuesday, March 11, 2025. (F. Carter Smith/Bloomberg via Getty Images/Getty Images)

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Transformative technologies like fusion often seem distant until progress accelerates, Mumgaard said, pushing back against the idea that long development timelines mean breakthroughs are still a long way off.

Mumgaard compared the work towards the merger to the past conversations about AInoting that after years of conversations, ChatGPT suddenly became mainstream.

“Merger is one of those things where, unless you pay attention to progress at a detailed level, it looks like it’s impossible. And suddenly it feels inevitable. And that change can happen very quickly if you’re just looking at it superficially,” he said.