In December 2020, the Chinese experimental nuclear fusion reactor HL-2M achieved its first plasma discharge. In May 2021, Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) announced a new world record for superheated plasma, sustaining a temperature of 120 M°C for 101 seconds and a peak of 160 M°C for 20 seconds. In December 2021 EAST set a new world record for high temperature (70 M°C) plasma of 1,056 seconds.
In 2020, Chevron Corporation announced an investment in start-up Zap Energy, co-founded by British entrepreneur and investor, Benj Conway, together with physicists Brian Nelson and Uri Shumlak from University of Washington. In 2021 the company raised $27.5 million in Series B funding led by Addition.
In 2021, the US DOE launched the INFUSE program, a public-private knowledge sharing initiative involving a PPPL, MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center and Commonwealth Fusion Systems partnership, together with partnerships with TAE Technologies, Princeton Fusion Systems, and Tokamak Energy. In 2021, DOE's Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee approved a strategic plan to guide fusion energy and plasma physics research that included a working power plant by 2040, similar to Canadian, Chinese, and U.K. efforts.
In January 2021, SuperOx announced the commercialization of a new superconducting wire, with more than 700 A/mm2 current capability.
TAE Technologies announced that its Norman device had sustained a temperature of about 60 million degrees C for 30 milliseconds, 8 and 10 times higher, respectively, than the company's previous devices. The duration was claimed to be limited by the power supply rather than the device.
In August 2021, the National Ignition Facility recorded a record-breaking 1.3 megajoules of energy created from fusion which is the first example of the Lawson criterion being surpassed in a laboratory.
In February 2022, JET sustained 11 MW and a Q value of 0.33 for over 5 seconds, outputting 59.7 megajoules, using a mix of deuterium and tritium for fuel. In March 2022 it was announced that Tokamak Energy achieved a record plasma temperature of 100 million kelvins, inside a commercial compact tokamak.
In October 2022, the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) reached a record plasma duration of 45 seconds, sustaining the high-temperature fusion plasma over the 100 million degrees Celsus based on the integrated real-time RMP control for ELM-less H-mode, i.e. fast ions regulated enhancement (FIRE) mode, machine learning algorithm, and 3D field optimization via an edge-localized RMP.
In December 2022, the NIF achieved the first scientific breakeven controlled fusion experiment, with an energy gain of 1.5.
In February 2024, the KSTAR tokamak set a new record (shot #34705) for the longest duration (102 seconds) of a magnetically confined plasma. The plasma was operated in ELM-less H-mode, with much better control of the error field than was possible previously. KSTAR also set a record (shot #34445) for the longest steady-state duration at a temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius (48 seconds).