Germany's Federal Agency for Breakthrough Innovation (SPRIND) has established a milestone-based fusion program on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology, and Space (BMFTR) and as part of the government's High-Tech Agenda Germany (HTAD). The initiative is designed to help the HTAD in its efforts to use technology-specific roadmaps and flagship programs to strengthen Germany's high-performing technology innovation and to speed the conversion of tech research into practical applications.

Through the new Milestone Program, the German government intends to provide financial support to fusion companies-particularly start-ups-to advance fusion technology development. The funds will be awarded via a competitive process.

According to SPRIND, the milestone-based fusion program is being implemented as a supplement to the BMFTR's traditional research funding, and it will specifically support participating companies "as system integrators and technology drivers." The primary goal of the new program "is to enable private companies to realize Germany's first fusion power plant as quickly as possible."

Technical and financial milestones: Like the U.S. Department of Energy's cost-shared Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program, which was established in 2023, the German Milestone Program supports selected companies with funding based on stated technical and financial milestones toward the eventual deployment of a demonstration fusion power plant. And as in the U.S. program, the companies' progress toward each milestone will be evaluated by independent external experts.

The German program is being implemented with a combination of this performance-based government funding and the "targeted leverage of private capital, as well as rigorous evaluation of technological and economic progress [to] provide the necessary speed, dynamism, and proximity [of fusion technology] to the market," according to the SPRIND website.

For each participating company, the final milestone in the program will be the "submission of a Technical Design Report, which is essentially a blueprint for a fusion demonstration power plant."

Funding for the program, which is being derived from the German government's Special Fund for Infrastructure and Climate Neutrality (SVIK), is slated to total €500 million ($560 million) through 2029. After that, public funding for the program is expected to increase to as much as €2.5 billion ($2.8 billion).

Quotables: BMFTR minister Dorothee Bär said of the new initiative, "The Milestone Program is a new and important pillar of our strategy for building a fusion power plant in Germany. The Milestone Program is intended to leverage private investment. It serves as a close-to-market complement to existing funding measures and strengthens Germany as a location for science and technology."

SPRIND director Rafael Laguna de la Vera noted that, with the Milestone Program, "We are deliberately taking a new and bolder approach: We don't just fund technologies, we support the development of strong companies. What matters most is measurable progress, rapid learning and a willingness to consistently reallocate resources when our own results or external developments show that our assumptions were wrong."

Meanwhile, in the States: Three U.S. companies participating in the DOE's Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program recently reported updates on their progress in meeting their milestones, as well as additional funding for the milestone-based fusion work. Those companies are among the eight firms that the DOE selected in May 2023 to develop fusion pilot plant designs and resolve related scientific and technological challenges within 5-10 years.

The stated goal of the DOE Milestone Program is to accelerate privately funded fusion companies toward commercial viability with the assistance of targeted public-private investment that is linked to independently verified technical and commercial milestones.

DOE had initially announced awards to the eight companies totaling $46 million for an 18-month period. In addition to those federal funds, awardees had collectively raised more than $350 million in new private funding by the beginning of 2025. Some of these companies are hoping to complete their fusion power plant preliminary design reviews by the late 2020s as a step toward realizing operating fusion facilities by the mid-2030s.