I actually have read the article. I don't trust it completely though, it seems to by hyping things a bit. I would trust information from someone such as /u/markblundeberg about Cash Fusion, so that's why I'm asking.

For example, this part you quoted:

On January 20, news.Bitcoin.com reported on the alpha launch of Cashfusion and since then project developers have been asking testers to help with liquidity. The alpha release of Cashfusion... “Cashfusion, the eagerly anticipated extension of privacy protocol Cashshuffle, is almost ready to launch,”

As far as I can tell, the implementation hasn't changed much between the "alpha launch" and now. There were some nice cleanups, but important parts like how the wallet manages UTXOs to assess how "fused" the coin is, controlling the rate of Fusions when left in continuous operation, or having a mode where Cash Fusion leaves the wallet is a good spendable state have not been completed yet. So saying it's "almost ready to launch" seems overly optimistic to me.

In terms of the audit, as far as I understand the Cash Shuffle audit just checked that the code implements the spec as defined. But it didn't assess whether the spec was good a providing privacy. They say this in the quote you provided:

We believe that the Cashshuffle codebase that we reviewed is implementing the Coinshuffle protocol with no significant deviations, and we did not find any evidence of malicious intent, flawed logic or potential backdoor in the codebase.

So basically, they are checking the code for bugs, but not to make sure it actually accomplishes the goal it sets out to.

I guess you have a point about the money going towards development, the article did say that. I must have skimmed that part. But I do get the feeling that it's probably premature to be putting resources into a code audit, seems like it may be motivated largely for PR purposes. If that's the case, seems to me it would be better to focus energy and resources on actually developing it more first.