Alphabet Inc.’s Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) has entered into a landmark agreement to purchase electricity from a fusion power plant currently under development in Virginia, becoming the first corporation to secure a direct power purchase deal tied to commercial fusion energy.
The agreement, announced Monday, involves 200 megawatts of electricity from Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), a company spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2018. The power will come from CFS’s future ARC fusion project based in Chesterfield, Virginia.
Alongside the power deal, Google is also boosting its financial support for CFS. While the exact investment amount was not revealed, CFS CEO Bob Mumgaard said it was “comparable” to Google’s previous stake in a $1.8 billion funding round in 2021.
Fusion, the same process that powers the sun, generates energy by fusing light atomic nuclei—an approach that offers the promise of vast energy production without the long-lived radioactive waste associated with nuclear fission.
“Yes, there are some serious physics and engineering challenges that we still have to work through to make it commercially viable and scalable,” said Michael Terrell, Google’s Head of Advanced Energy. “But that’s something that we want to be investing in now to realize that future.”
CFS aims to bring the 400 MW ARC plant online in the early 2030s. In the meantime, the company is building its SPARC demonstration reactor in Massachusetts. The project uses high-temperature superconducting magnets and a tokamak configuration to contain ultra-hot plasma—one of fusion’s key scientific challenges.
The timing of the deal reflects rising global electricity demand, fueled in part by the explosive growth of AI workloads and data centers. Virginia, in particular, has become a global epicenter for data center infrastructure, further intensifying demand for reliable, clean power sources.
Google has long championed renewable energy and carbon reduction. Since 2010, the tech company has signed deals for over 22 gigawatts of clean energy worldwide. Its recent efforts have helped cut the carbon emissions of its data centers by 12%, despite their increasing power requirements.