General Atomics (GA) is an independent San Diego technology company, founded in 1955, whose magnetic 📝fusion division operates the 📝DIII-D National Fusion Facility for the U.S. Department of Energy and manufactures fusion magnets, diagnostics and simulation software.
GA began as the General Atomic division of General Dynamics and built its early business on research reactors before the Atomic Energy Commission selected it to construct Doublet III, a shaped-📝plasma 📝Tokamak that reached first plasma in February 1978. Rebuilt with a 📝divertor and a more strongly shaped cross-section, that machine became DIII-D, which GA has operated ever since as a DOE Office of Science user facility and which the company describes as the largest magnetic fusion research facility in the United States.
The company is equally a manufacturer. At its Magnet Technologies Center in Poway, California, GA fabricated the six modules of 📝ITER's 📝central solenoid, completing the last of them in August 2025 after fifteen years of work — each module taking more than two years to wind and test. Stacked, the assembly stands close to 18 metres tall and 4.25 metres wide, weighs over 1,000 tons, and is the largest pulsed 📝superconductor-based magnet yet built. GA also supplies diagnostic systems to ITER.
GA's theory and computational science group maintains the GACODE suite that much of the field models with: the 📝gyrokinetics solvers CGYRO and GYRO, the neoclassical code NEO, the transport driver TGYRO, and the reduced model TGLF. CGYRO underpins the published core performance projections for 📝SPARC and 📝ARC — modeled predictions for machines that have not yet operated, not measurements.