Commonwealth Fusion Systems Orders More Than 10,000 km of HTS Tape from Fujikura
Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) has signed a long-term contract with Fujikura for more than 10,000 km of high-temperature superconductor (HTS) tape, an agreement CFS calls the largest of its kind for the material. The tape is for CFS’s ARC fusion power plants, starting with the first one in Virginia, and Fujikura is expanding its production capacity to deliver it. Neither company has disclosed the contract value, the delivery schedule or the size of the new investment.
CFS has committed to ARC tape volumes before SPARC proves net energy
CFS announced the contract on 30 September 2026 and also expresses it as 3 giga-amp-metres (GA-m). A GA-m is a billion amp-metres: a measure of conductor quantity that multiplies the current a tape carries by its length. Fujikura’s own release describes it as the company’s largest-ever long-term supply contract for HTS wire, and dates the signing to 28 September 2026, US local time.
The tape will go into ARC power plants, beginning with the first grid-scale ARC plant at the Fall Line Fusion Power Station in Chesterfield County, Virginia. CFS chief executive Bob Mumgaard said the partnership shows the company is “actively placing orders” so that it can build ARC once its SPARC fusion machine achieves Q>1, the point at which CFS says SPARC will generate net energy. The order therefore commits CFS to power plant conductor ahead of the result that the plant depends on, and it gives Fujikura its largest HTS tape order to date.
Fujikura is adding capacity without saying how much it will spend
Both companies say Fujikura is investing to expand production capacity so that it can deliver the tape at scale. Neither release gives an amount. Fujikura president and chief executive Naoki Okada said in the CFS release that the company will keep strengthening its position as a key supplier of HTS tape and is building a long-term business platform for the 2030s and beyond.
Fujikura already has an expansion programme running. In February 2026 it committed ¥5.6 billion on top of about ¥6.0 billion spent in fiscal 2024, targeting three to four times its previous capacity by fiscal 2027 and a further doubling. Neither release connects the CFS order to that programme, so it is not yet clear whether the order will be served from capacity already funded or needs spending beyond it.
Fujikura’s release describes its wire as made by ion beam assisted deposition (IBAD), a method the company developed in 1991.
Fujikura now combines a volume order with equity in fusion customers
The contract extends a relationship that already includes ownership. Fujikura has supplied CFS since its early years and took an equity stake in the company in September 2025 as part of a twelve-member Japanese consortium. It also signed a framework agreement in 2025 to supply wire for STEP, the UK’s prototype fusion power plant.
On 8 October 2026 Fujikura announced an equity investment in Helical Fusion, a Japanese developer of helical fusion reactors that use HTS magnets, with no amount or supply agreement disclosed. With its July 2026 stake in Starlight Engine, developer of the FAST tokamak in Japan, Fujikura has taken equity in three fusion developers in just over a year, and now holds a firm tape order from one of them.