Oh great, another public-private partnership puff piece. What NPR is trying to do here is convey government as “inefficient” and pave the way for more public support to take away the meager amounts of funding that Fusion get’s and give them to contractors that will then give that money to share holders, essentially stealing it from the public.
To put it another way, imagine that this “company” that claims they are close to a fusion breakthrough were lead by Elon Musk, would you believe him?