Helion and Microsoft want to transform nuclear fusion into reality by 2028

Startup Helion receives $ 425 million to develop nuclear merger reactor and promises to provide electricity to Microsoft by 2028, surpassing technological and industrial challenges

Helion, one of the most observed nuclear merger startups in the world, announced on Tuesday (28) an investment of $ 425 million in its Round F Series Round, raising its valuation to $ 5.245 billion. The company, which has the support of Sam Altman – currently involved in rumors about negotiations with OpenAi – has an ambitious agreement to provide electricity to Microsoft by 2028, long before the time limit provided for by its competitors.

Helion’s unconventional approach to nuclear fusion and its air of mystery gained both admirers and critical. However, startup investors are not among skeptics. Last month, Helion activated its latest prototype called Polaris, which can become the first fusion reactor capable of generating electricity.

Polaris, Helion’s seventh prototype, is installed in a 27,000 square meter building in Everett, Washington. Its construction took more than three years, a relatively short period for the merger industry standards. However, to fulfill the environmental goal of 2028 established with Microsoft, the company will need to further accelerate the development of its plant on a commercial scale.

The challenges faced by Helion are, in many ways, similar to those of other top industries. “In the field of AI, what is the big challenge? Get the chips. In the fusion, what is the big challenge? Get the chips, ”CEO David Kirtley told a recent interview with Techcrunch. “Polaris uses 50,000 of these high power semiconductors and obtaining these components defined the schedule.”

The solutions that Helion seeks also follow a similar path. The new investment will be directed to bring a significant part of specialized manufacturing into the company. For example, Helion had to order capacitors – short -term energy storage devices – three years in advance.

“Our goal is to go beyond three years for a supplier to deliver us capacitors to manufacture them internally, but faster, so that we can produce them in a year or less,” Kirtley explained.

Although he is building his scorching chain from scratch, Kirtley remains optimistic that Helion could provide electricity to Microsoft in a few years. “We have been working on the location of the installation for Microsoft for a few years,” said Kirtley, without revealing the place. He added that the company is advancing on licensing and interconnected issues with the power grid, processes that may take years.

Part of the fascination with Helion – as well as risk, according to critics – is the fact that his approach to nuclear fusion differs from virtually all other startups in the sector.

In general terms, there are two main approaches: magnetic confinement, which uses powerful magnets to compress plasma until it is hot and dense enough to start continuous fusion reactions, generating steam to move turbines; and the inertial confinement, which fires powerful lasers in small fuel capsules, compressing them until the atoms are founded. To generate enough heat to feed a steam turbine, a reactor needs to shoot several times per second.

Helion is building something completely different: a reverse field configuration reactor. The device has a witch shape with a bulge in the center and is surrounded by powerful magnets, which guide and compress the plasma during each reaction, which Helion calls “pulse”.

At the beginning of a pulse, Helion injects a mixture of deuterium and helium-3 at each end and warms it until it forms plasma. The magnets then shape each ring -shaped plasma and boost them against each other at more than 1.6 million kilometers per hour. When the plasmas reach the melting chamber – the bulge in the middle of the hourglass – they collide and are compressed even more by another set of magnets. This warms the plasma to over 100 million degrees Celsius, triggering a waterfall of atoms merging. The process is similar to that of an ignition candle lighting fuel into an internal combustion engine.

Energy added by melting reactions generates an increase in magnetic force, which pushes the reactor magnets. This extra magnetic force is then converted directly into electricity. If all works as planned, the Helion reactor will generate more electricity from this magnetic outbreak than it was necessary to feed the magnets initially. And since the system captures electricity directly from the magnets, instead of generating steam to rotate a turbine, it should be more efficient, reducing the energy equilibrium point.

The current design of a Helion reactor on a commercial scale will throb a few times per second, said Kirtley. A single reactor will generate 50 megawatts of electricity, and a plant may contain several reactors. In the laboratory, the company already has smaller systems capable of firing more than 100 times per second, suggesting that Helion future reactors can reach 60 pulses per second, the same frequency as electricity in the network. “But there are great engineering challenges to achieve these high repetition rates with the power levels we are discussing, where millions of amps flow,” Kirtley said.

The new round of financing, less than the $ 500 million previously raised, includes investors such as Lightspeed Venture Partners, Softbank Vision Fund 2 and a large university endowment fund. Existing investors such as Sam Altman, Capricorn Investment Group, Mithril Capital, Dustin Moskovitz and Nucor also participated.