Helion Energy: The Fusion Power Plant Built for

Helion Energy: The Fusion Power Plant Racing to Power Microsoft by 2028

For seventy years, fusion energy has been the answer that stays twenty years away. Every generation of scientists inherited the promise and passed on the delay. On February 13, 2026, a small company in Washington state did something no private organization had ever done — and the twenty-year clock started running again, this time from a much shorter distance.

Helion Energy's Polaris prototype reactor reached 150 million degrees Celsius. That's ten times hotter than the core of the sun. Polaris became the first privately developed fusion power plant prototype to demonstrate measurable deuterium-tritium fusion and set a plasma temperature record for the private sector — both industry firsts in a single announcement. More practically, it's three-quarters of the temperature Helion believes it needs to run a commercial plant.

What Makes Helion's Fusion Power Plant Technology Different

Most fusion approaches heat plasma and capture the energy as heat — which then drives a steam turbine, just like a coal plant. Helion does something more direct. Unlike traditional fusion designs that rely on steam turbines, Polaris is built to demonstrate direct electricity generation from fusion reactions — a critical step for scalable deployment.

The machine uses a Field Reversed Configuration — a compact, elongated plasma shape that Helion has refined across seven generations of prototypes. Polaris pulses faster than its predecessor Trenta, uses stronger magnets for improved plasma confinement, and is the first private fusion machine to operate using deuterium-tritium fuel. Helion was also the first company to receive regulatory approval to possess and use tritium for fusion demonstration purposes — a regulatory milestone as significant as the technical one.

David Kirtley, Helion's co-founder and CEO, was direct about Polaris's role: the goal was never to stop at Polaris. The goal is Orion — and Polaris is the proof that Orion can work.

Orion: The Fusion Power Plant Already Under Construction

In July 2025, Helion broke ground on Orion, its first commercial fusion power plant, in Malaga, Washington — roughly halfway between Seattle and Spokane, along the Columbia River. The site was chosen for its access to infrastructure, its proximity to Helion's engineering team, and its community support for clean energy development.

Orion is expected to produce at least 50 megawatts of electricity after a one-year ramp-up period. That output is earmarked for a specific customer. In 2023, Helion signed the world's first commercial agreement for fusion energy — agreeing to supply Microsoft with 50 MWe starting in 2028. No fusion company, public or private, had ever signed a power purchase agreement before that deal. Helion did it years before its plant existed.

After a $425 million Series F funding round in January 2025, Helion was valued at $5.4 billion. The round was led by Sam Altman — Helion's executive chairman and OpenAI's CEO — with new investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners and SoftBank Vision Fund 2, alongside existing backers Dustin Moskovitz and Nucor Steel.

Why the Fusion Power Plant Timeline Has Never Been This Real

The skepticism is fair. Fusion has absorbed billions in public funding across seven decades without putting a single electron on a commercial grid. Helion is asking the market to believe this time is different — and the market, increasingly, is saying yes.

Here's why the case is stronger than it's ever been. Previous milestones were achieved in government labs with unlimited time horizons. Helion has a hard deadline: a contract with Microsoft to deliver electricity starting in 2028, which drives engineering decisions in a way that academic targets never could. Furthermore, Polaris is already operational. The plasma is already forming. The temperatures are already being recorded.

Helion is also the only fusion company currently operating with deuterium-tritium fuel — the combination that produces the highest energy yield and the one every commercial plant will eventually need. Running it in a real machine, not a simulation, is the gap most competitors haven't crossed yet.

Clean electricity from fusion doesn't just replace fossil fuels. It makes the energy math work for everything electricity powers — AI data centers, electric transport, industrial heat, and cities that don't yet exist. Helion is building the plant that starts that chain reaction. Whether it arrives in 2028, 2030, or beyond, the direction is no longer in doubt.