--- title: 'Helion — company profile' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/companies/helion' type: 'company' updated: '2026-07-02' --- # Helion > Helion is building the world's first fusion power plant to deliver clean, reliable baseload electricity straight from fusion, no steam turbine required. - **Website:** https://www.helionenergy.com/ - **Type:** Private (Series G) - **Headquarters:** Everett, Washington, USA - **Founded:** 2013 - **Founders:** David Kirtley, Chris Pihl, George Votroubek, John Slough, Anthony Pancotti - **Valuation:** $15.5B - **Total raised:** $1.5B - **Latest round:** Series G · $465M · 2026 - **Investors:** Thrive Capital, Sam Altman, Dustin Moskovitz (Good Ventures), Reid Hoffman, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Mithril Capital, Capricorn Investment Group, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Peak XV Partners, Lux Capital, Alta Park Capital, Anti Fund, BoxGroup, Bill Ford - **Business model:** B2B power supply. Helion sells electricity to large industrial and hyperscale buyers through long-term power purchase and plant-development agreements, and is building the fusion power plants that fulfill them. - **Industries:** Energy - **Open roles:** 109 - **Profile:** https://feeny.ai/companies/helion ## What they do Helion designs and builds pulsed, field-reversed-configuration fusion machines that fire and compress plasmas to fusion temperatures and then recover the energy directly as electricity, skipping the steam-turbine step used by most other fusion and nuclear designs. Its long-term fuel is deuterium plus helium-3, aimed at smaller, cheaper, factory-buildable plants that supply always-on carbon-free power to the grid. ## Overview **The fusion company that decided physics wasn't the problem** Helion has spent more than a decade on a contrarian bet: that fusion isn't a physics mystery waiting to be solved, but an engineering problem you grind down by building, testing, and iterating. Founded in 2013 in Washington State by David Kirtley and a small group of plasma physicists, it has now built seven prototypes, each one pushing a single system closer to a commercial power plant. The wager is finally getting expensive to doubt. Helion has raised roughly $1.5 billion, its latest round valuing it at $15.5 billion, and it has signed the first commercial fusion power agreement in history with Microsoft. Its seventh machine, Polaris, ran deuterium-tritium fusion in 2026, and the company has broken ground in Malaga, WA on Orion, which it calls the world's first fusion power plant. ## What They Do **Turning fusion straight into electricity, no steam involved** Most fusion designs make heat, boil water, and spin a turbine, losing energy at every step. Helion skips all of it. Its machines fire two rings of plasma at each other at a million miles per hour, compress the collision with pulsed magnets to over 100 million degrees Celsius, and then recover the energy directly as electricity when the expanding plasma pushes back against the magnetic field. The company calls this a pulsed, non-ignition system, and it thinks of the physics like regenerative braking in an electric car. The payoff it is chasing is smaller, cheaper, factory-buildable machines that deliver always-on, carbon-free baseload power to the grid. ## What They Do **Why the world needs power that never clocks out** Helion frames fusion as the missing piece of the clean-energy grid: always-on power that doesn't care about weather, doesn't run a chain reaction, and doesn't leave long-lived radioactive waste. Its fuel is deuterium pulled from water plus helium-3 the company plans to produce inside its own machines, which sidesteps the scarcity and geopolitics that shadow fossil fuels. The machine also shuts off the instant it stops being actively driven, and it only holds seconds of fuel at a time, which the company leans on as its core safety story. ## Products **Polaris proves it, Orion sells it** Helion's product line is really a sequence of machines marching toward a power plant. Polaris, the seventh prototype, is a 19-meter device with a 50-plus megajoule capacitor bank and 15-plus tesla magnets, built to show it can recover electricity directly from fusion. In 2026 it became the first privately funded machine to run bulk deuterium-tritium fusion and hit plasma temperatures around 150 million degrees Celsius. Orion is the next step and the real business: the commercial plant now under construction in Malaga, WA, designed to deliver electricity to the grid. Helion also runs HERCULES, a $4 million program funding 20 research institutions on the enabling tech that scaled fusion will need. ## Who It's For **Built for hyperscalers and heavy industry hungry for clean power** Helion isn't selling to homeowners. Its customers are the buyers with enormous, around-the-clock electricity needs and a mandate to decarbonize: hyperscale data center operators and heavy manufacturers. That profile is exactly why its two named customers are Microsoft, chasing clean power for AI-era data centers, and Nucor, North America's largest steelmaker. The surging demand for AI compute is the tailwind here, and Helion has said as much, pitching fusion as the answer to power buyers who want firm, carbon-free supply at scale. ### Ideal customer profiles - **Data center / hyperscale operators** — Need firm, carbon-free power for AI-era compute; Must decarbonize at massive scale - **Heavy industry / manufacturers** — Need reliable large-scale clean power for energy-intensive production; Decarbonizing processes like steelmaking - **Utilities and grid buyers** — Want dispatchable baseload that complements renewables; Reducing reliance on imported fuels ## Proof **Seven machines, one deuterium-tritium first** Helion's case rests on hardware, not slideware. It has built and tested seven prototypes, each retiring a specific risk: Grande hit 4 tesla compression, Trenta reached plasma temperatures above 9 keV and compressed FRC plasmas past 8 tesla, and the company demonstrated direct magnetic energy recovery at over 95% round-trip efficiency across more than a million pulses. The headline result came in 2026, when Polaris became the first privately developed fusion machine to demonstrate measurable deuterium-tritium fusion and reached roughly 150 million degrees Celsius. That milestone, more than any funding number, is what the company points to when asked whether the approach is real. ## Competition **A different fusion bet than the tokamak crowd** Helion is playing a different game than most of the well-funded fusion field. Where Commonwealth Fusion Systems, TAE, and the ITER-style tokamak world pursue steady-state confinement and heat-to-turbine conversion, Helion runs a pulsed, field-reversed-configuration machine and converts plasma energy straight to electricity. That direct-recovery, helium-3 architecture is its main claim to a smaller, cheaper, faster-to-deploy plant. The catch, which its own critics press on, is that the design is unusual enough that few outsiders can independently check it. ### Their edge - **Direct energy conversion** — Recovers electricity directly from the plasma via Faraday's Law instead of boiling water for a turbine, cutting a major source of energy loss and system complexity. - **Pulsed FRC architecture** — A pulsed, non-ignition field-reversed-configuration machine that lets output be tuned by pulse rate and avoids some steady-state plasma-instability challenges. - **In-house manufacturing** — Builds standardized components like high-voltage capacitors in-house, aiming for smaller, lower-cost, factory-buildable plants. ### Where they're betting - Delivering fusion electricity to Microsoft later this decade - Building Orion, its first commercial plant, in Chelan County, WA - Scaling U.S. fusion manufacturing capacity - Serving AI-driven data center power demand ## What People Say **A hardware track record shadowed by broken timelines** What supporters like is concrete: Helion actually builds machines, it has real milestones like the D-T fusion result and direct energy recovery, and it landed the first commercial fusion contract when it signed Microsoft. The engineering-first, ship-it culture reads as refreshingly grounded in a field full of promises. The criticism is just as consistent. Helion has missed its own deadlines, including a loud 2021 promise to show net electricity by 2024, and it rarely publishes in peer-reviewed journals, so physicists can't independently vet the approach. Some plasma experts call the commercial timeline audacious to the point of science fiction, and co-founder John Slough, who later split with the company, has warned that its aggressive compression could drive plasma instabilities severe enough to lose confinement before fusion pays off. ## Funding **$1.5B raised, a $15.5B valuation to live up to** Helion closed a $465 million Series G in June 2026 at a $15.5 billion post-money valuation, roughly triple its prior mark, bringing total money raised to about $1.5 billion. Thrive Capital led the round, which the company says will expand U.S. fusion manufacturing and speed deployment. The backer list is a who's who of tech money: Sam Altman, who seeded the company early, Dustin Moskovitz through Good Ventures, Reid Hoffman, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Mithril, Capricorn, Lightspeed, Peak XV, Lux Capital, and Ford executive chairman Bill Ford. The valuation is now the bar the machines have to clear. ## Team & Culture **Hard hardware, hard truths, in the Pacific Northwest** Helion is engineering-led and operator-built, and it hires for people who want their hands on real hardware: capacitors, magnets, pulsed-power systems, and plasma diagnostics. Its four stated values, build with urgency, take ownership, execute rigorously, and deliver hard truths, all circle back to the founding conviction that fusion gets solved by iterating faster than anyone thinks possible. The work is concentrated in Everett, WA, with the Orion build site in Chelan County, and most roles are onsite and hardware-bound. It's a mission-first shop that openly tells candidates the work is really hard, which is rather the point. ## Compensation **Six-figure engineering bands, and everyone gets equity** Helion discloses salary ranges on many of its roles, and they skew high for a hardware company. Engineering bands run from roughly $108,000 to $320,000 a year, with operations and other functions landing in a similar spread and a handful of hourly technician roles alongside them. All figures are in U.S. dollars for Washington-based positions. The bigger draw is ownership. Every Helion employee receives stock options plus a 5% 401(k) match and performance-based annual increases, so the upside is tied directly to whether the fusion bet pays off. ## Security & Legal **Helion Energy, Inc., and a fuel that can't melt down** The registered entity is Helion Energy, Inc., operating out of Washington State, with a privacy policy and terms of use both effective May 31, 2021. Its stated safety posture is structural rather than procedural: fusion can't run a self-sustaining chain reaction, the machine stops the instant it isn't actively driven, and only seconds of fuel sit in the generator at any moment. The company notes its machines produce manageable radiation while running, shielded with commercially available materials like concrete, and that fusion fuels such as tritium fall under existing dual-use export controls. ## In the News **From a Microsoft first to a plant breaking ground** Helion's news cycle has turned from lab results to deployment. The through-line: a first-of-its-kind Microsoft power agreement in 2023, a record-setting deuterium-tritium result on Polaris, a construction permit and groundbreaking for Orion in Chelan County, and the $465 million Series G that reset its valuation. Coverage runs from trade press like POWER Magazine and Nuclear Engineering International to Reuters, TechCrunch, and GeekWire, alongside the company's own technical blog. ### Coverage - [Helion, the Sam Altman-backed fusion startup, raises $465M to build a power plant for Microsoft](https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/04/helion-the-sam-altman-backed-fusion-startup-raises-465m-to-build-a-power-plant-for-microsoft/) — TechCrunch (2026-06-04) - [Helion hits $15.5B valuation with $465M in new cash as it aims to commercialize fusion this decade](https://www.geekwire.com/2026/helion-hits-15-5b-valuation-with-465m-in-new-cash-to-commercialize-fusion-this-decade/) — GeekWire (2026-06-04) - [Helion Announces $465-Million Funding Round to Support Fusion Energy](https://www.powermag.com/helion-announces-465-million-funding-round-to-support-fusion-energy/) — POWER Magazine (2026-06) - [Helion Energy starts construction on nuclear fusion plant to power Microsoft](https://www.helionenergy.com/newsroom) — Reuters (2025-07-30) - [Announcing Helion's fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft](https://www.helionenergy.com/newsroom/helion-announces-worlds-first-fusion-ppa-with-microsoft) — Helion Blog (2023-05) - [Helion Energy is building a fusion power plant. Can its technology deliver?](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/helion-energy-is-building-a-fusion-power-plant-can-its-technology-deliver/) — Scientific American - [The fusion pivot: Helion CEO David Kirtley's journey from starships to sustainable star power](https://www.geekwire.com/2026/the-fusion-pivot-helion-ceo-david-kirtleys-journey-from-starships-to-sustainable-star-power/) — GeekWire (2026) - [Helion raises billions promising net electricity from fusion by 2024](https://newatlas.com/energy/helion-net-electricity-nuclear-fusion-polaris/) — New Atlas ## Outlook **The next few years decide whether the bet was right** Helion has done the hard part of turning a fringe fusion concept into funded, permitted, under-construction infrastructure with named customers waiting on the other end. The Microsoft deal calls for delivering power later this decade, and Orion is the machine that has to make good on it. The risk is the same one skeptics keep naming: the timelines have slipped before, the physics of direct recovery and helium-3 fuel is unproven at commercial scale, and the company's reluctance to publish leaves outsiders trusting its own results. If Orion delivers electricity to the grid, Helion rewrites the energy map. If it slips again, a $15.5 billion valuation gets very heavy. ## Company details - **Mission:** To fully satisfy the world's need for clean, abundant energy. - **Products:** Polaris, Orion, HERCULES Program - **Notable customers:** Microsoft, Nucor - **Customer segments:** Hyperscale data center operators, Heavy industry / manufacturing, Utilities and large-scale power buyers - **Buyers / users:** Data center / cloud infrastructure leaders, Industrial energy and operations buyers, Utility power procurement teams - **Competitors:** Commonwealth Fusion Systems, TAE Technologies, Tokamak-based programs (ITER-style) - **What sets them apart:** Direct electricity recovery from the expanding plasma (no steam cycle) at >95% round-trip efficiency; Pulsed, non-ignition FRC design that sidesteps some of the hardest steady-state confinement physics; Deuterium + helium-3 fuel cycle, producing helium-3 in-house, for fewer neutrons and direct charged-particle capture; Engineering-and-iteration approach: seven prototypes built and tested toward a commercial plant; Compact, standardized components (including in-house capacitors) built for factory-scale deployment ## Open roles (109) - [Mechanical Engineer, Vacuum Systems](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/3969dbcd-116f-41ed-ba7d-13405a917c02) — Everett, WA - [Senior Mechanical Engineer, Vacuum Systems](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/e4b32a69-c550-4e2c-934d-6f7fc1b764ef) — Everett, WA - [Security Officer](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/d07c8fdc-735c-4d29-be5b-51470808a5a5) — Everett, WA - [LabVIEW Controls Engineer](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/266bb6e9-153a-4ec2-9929-5194392fc26d) — Everett, WA - [Mechanical Engineer, Plasma Diagnostics](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/e2bc64d9-219b-4d0c-9b39-b6c7fad4870b) — Everett, WA - [Principal Operations Systems Engineer](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/bb7f7949-acc7-49bd-8de4-d7ef240e41c2) — Everett, WA - [Mechanical Engineer, Early Career](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/58e10b48-8a10-4b02-8f06-530100714a61) — Everett, WA - [Director of Engineering, Modules](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/b459ceac-bf0f-4b87-8557-5579ddb26900) — Everett, WA - [Director of Talent Acquisition](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/41cb7e9a-04c5-4ae9-a53d-c9dab0e23ea1) — Everett, WA - [Senior Manager of Internal Communications](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/ed90129a-d878-4d42-a288-11e858ceefa4) — Everett, WA - [Manager, Plasma Diagnostics](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/a79a46b2-8653-49b6-8516-b18b9900de55) — Everett, WA - [Manager, Nuclear Engineering](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/b47c6a96-3eaa-4de8-b8bf-d5ad960a0ab8) — Everett, WA - [R&D Engineer - Fusion Generator Operations](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/cba60be8-430b-4f1c-8fb0-c3e79a43606f) — Everett, WA - [Diagnostics Technician](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/1253af86-a0ec-4c13-8942-63460a05f970) — Everett, WA - [Computational Plasma Scientist - MHD](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/70335d73-70c1-478e-b317-a3fd2f5a0dac) — Everett, WA - [Manager, Quality](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/c0fa122b-d4fc-4692-b78d-c14bedf53f36) — Everett, WA - [Senior Director of Build](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/8757830e-49ee-4309-af0d-3bf6c33afc6b) — Everett, WA - [Technical Program Manager, IS&T](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/3901a045-7e58-47b9-9ba8-3049485490de) — Everett, WA - [Senior Construction Project Engineer](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/411c557c-d386-4cb2-9ecf-1ba94bf30501) — Everett, WA - [High Voltage Test Technician](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/54718170-4ad0-4b47-ab96-4dddedb1beb8) — Everett, WA - [Senior Manufacturing Engineer](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/8ab1a5c0-a9c6-44c9-8caf-cb618db38890) — Everett, WA - [Senior Materials Engineer, Dielectrics](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/4388852c-2dd6-410f-a5c5-7ba64c7b23c5) — Everett, WA - [Manager, Technical Maintenance](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/14d31fd7-955b-47ce-bc5d-2d84dcd48836) — Everett, WA - [Internal Communications Partner](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/8906b43b-f948-4eb5-b1f6-445532264068) — Everett, WA - [Supplier Development Engineer, Electrical](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/b4efeb48-dbd7-42f3-b6a9-4f97c2074bf3) — Everett, WA - [Controls Development Engineer](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/11d1f007-d4d0-44d1-a956-e3bd0bb8c53e) — Everett, WA - [Senior Manager, Plasma Diagnostics](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/a1969b3f-8e12-4d74-9e0a-840472ffa46d) — Everett, WA - [Senior Materials Engineer, Diagnostics](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/1170a020-6c60-4449-86b5-55ea0bbde734) — Everett, WA - [Manager, Electrical Engineering](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/9a2f04d6-9fe1-4d87-8d7e-77877a418ac2) — Everett, WA - [Community + Brand Manager](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/7f9ebb75-86f8-4717-a76b-39070e13dd40) — Everett, WA - [Process Design Lead, Fuel Cycle](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/d9e0e2c2-5fda-44e2-b8f6-693590dd7702) — Everett, WA - [Senior Mechanical Engineer, Modules](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/99e6fa04-9412-453a-a350-4b6d6f38aec3) — Everett, WA - [Senior Mechanical Engineer](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/77f67235-ec72-4f14-8230-f99ed38a31de) — Everett, WA - [Principal Process Engineer, Fuel Cycle](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/e903954d-8e1b-4dd8-86b1-30c0e42204ac) — Everett, WA - [Principal Capacitor Engineer](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/24e6b2d6-d935-43dd-845c-f46847f24a37) — Everett, WA - [Senior Manager Mechanical Engineering, Structures](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/c4724186-c706-458e-a47f-5be613ed9442) — Everett, WA - [Senior Multiphysics Modeling Engineer](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/ad92a1bb-cc5e-462e-b41e-4fda4ac48a21) — Everett, WA - [R&D Hardware Test & Development Manager](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/e5cd14f6-e6da-4437-808a-b8b4c284263d) — Everett, WA - [Senior Semiconductor Device Engineer](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/423a9d67-00c6-46ab-9fe1-a1b469a9a049) — Everett, WA - [Procurement Specialist](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/90f4d795-6496-4ac3-bec8-704ad27cadf8) — Everett, WA - [Senior Technologist - Materials](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/e42c934d-0271-4071-b722-5e0edcad6495) — Everett, WA - [Senior Process Engineer, Fuel Cycle](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/9b11de3a-b129-432a-81c2-56dbdf64e5a9) — Everett, WA - [System Administrator](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/747a593f-ec17-4a7b-a715-9416cfb40e46) — Everett, WA - [Principal Power Electronics Packaging Engineer](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/7bd14ec3-4563-4b92-a28c-15bc249d0021) — Everett, WA - [Senior Computational Plasma Scientist - Kinetic / PIC Modeling](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/a68ac2cc-9d87-484b-a417-4893ce95b515) — Everett, WA - [Senior Manager, Electrical Engineering](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/4c29decd-568f-45d6-aa8b-4e6334b71f2f) — Everett, WA - [Senior Financial Analyst](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/6a2e2e50-692e-4696-a986-f0ab14d5eda1) — Everett, WA - [Senior Data Scientist – Fusion Systems](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/71f44aec-7b3c-4449-a705-9bf55943f689) — Everett, WA - [Electrical Engineer](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/48b798be-5137-4d66-9b1b-473c9c92c0a7) — Everett, WA - [Principal Nuclear Materials Engineer](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/a45f7359-1915-4646-b593-4d0397d5aa6f) — Everett, WA _…and 59 more at https://feeny.ai/companies/helion/jobs_ --- _Source: https://feeny.ai/companies/helion · profile updated 2026-07-02_