The TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 fusion agenda has taken shape, and the Smart Systems Stage is shaping up to be the rare conference track where the speakers have genuinely earned the podium. The event runs 13–15 October at Moscone Center in San Francisco, with sessions covering commercial fusion, grid modernisation, and the electricity crunch that is quietly becoming AI’s hardest engineering problem.
The line-up includes leaders from Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Helion, Inertia, and Bloom Energy. That’s not a random assortment of energy brands: each company is sitting on a live milestone that makes the conversation more than a thought-leadership exercise.
Why the TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Fusion Panels Carry Real Weight
Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) is perhaps the most concrete story in the room. Its SPARC tokamak is targeted to become the first commercially relevant fusion machine to produce net energy (Q>1) in 2027, at its facility in Devens, Massachusetts. The company has raised more than $3 billion since its 2018 founding, according to CFS’s own Tokamak Times blog.
More pointedly, CFS filed an application on 28 April 2026 to connect its first ARC fusion power plant, sited in Chesterfield County, Virginia, to PJM Interconnection, the world’s largest wholesale electricity market. That application is not a press-release ambition; it is a regulatory filing. Brandon Sorbom, CFS’s Chief Science Officer, will be on stage to talk through where that path leads.
Helion’s David Kirtley arrives with a different kind of credential. On 13 February 2026, Helion’s Polaris prototype became the first privately developed fusion machine to demonstrate measurable deuterium-tritium fusion and hit plasma temperatures of 150 million degrees Celsius, both industry firsts for private fusion. Then, on 16 June 2026, the company became the first in the world to secure regulatory licences for a fusion power plant, receiving a Radioactive Materials Licence and a Radioactive Air Emissions Licence from Washington State for its Orion facility in Malaga, Washington, where assembly and office construction are already complete.
The company’s $15.5 billion valuation followed a $465 million Series G that brought total investment to $1.5 billion, according to 425Business. Whether the valuation reflects a business or a set of very promising physics experiments is a question Kirtley will presumably field with grace.
Jeff Lawson’s Second Act and the Broader Fusion Gold Rush
Then there’s Inertia, the session everyone will probably overhear from the adjacent stage. Jeff Lawson, who co-founded Twilio, is now CEO of a company that raised a $450 million Series A led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with GV (Google Ventures), Modern Capital, and Threshold Ventures also participating, according to TechCrunch’s own reporting on the round. Inertia plans to start construction on a grid-scale fusion plant in 2030.
The company’s technology builds on work from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility, and the funding is earmarked for developing the world’s highest average power laser and the first fusion target assembly plant, according to Nuclear Engineering International. Inertia’s co-founders include Chief Scientist Dr Andrea ‘Annie’ Kritcher, who led successful NIF experiments, and Chief Technology Officer Professor Mike Dunne, a Stanford professor who helped Livermore design a power plant concept from NIF’s blueprint.
Fusion startups have collectively attracted more than $10 billion in investment, with at least a dozen companies having raised more than $100 million each, TechCrunch reported alongside the Inertia round. That is a sector, not a science project.
The Grid Problem That Ties All of It Together
Beyond fusion, the Smart Systems Stage addresses what is arguably the more immediate constraint: electricity demand from data centres is outpacing the infrastructure built to handle it. Sara Spangelo of Ambrosia Energy and Bill Thayer of Bloom Energy will cover how data centre operators and energy companies are racing to secure power before it becomes the bottleneck that slows AI’s expansion.
Drew Baglino, founder and CEO of Heron Power, and Apoorv Bhargava, CEO and co-founder of WeaveGrid, will join a panel on grid modernisation, exploring where investment is flowing and how utilities and startups are trying to build a more resilient system.
The TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 fusion and energy programme, in other words, is not a collection of moonshot pitches delivered at keynote volume. It’s a set of conversations between people who are, right now, filing grid-connection applications and construction permits. October will tell us whether the stage can match that energy.
