Helion Energy, a pioneering startup backed by OpenAI’s Sam Altman, has secured a landmark $425 million investment to accelerate the development of the world’s first nuclear fusion power plant, marking a potentially transformative moment in clean energy technology.
Funding milestone
The Series F funding round attracted prominent investors including:
- Lightspeed Venture Partners
- SoftBank
- Vision Fund 2
- Existing investors like Sam Altman, Capricorn Investment Group, and Dustin Moskovitz
With this latest investment, Helion has now raised over $1 billion since its founding in 2013, signaling growing confidence in its nuclear fusion technology.
Ambitious timeline
Helion’s CEO David Kirtley expressed enthusiasm about the funding, highlighting plans to “radically scale up manufacturing” in the United States. The company aims to construct the world’s first fusion power plant by 2028, with Microsoft—a major OpenAI investor—already securing a` purchase agreement.
Scientific significance
Nuclear fusion represents a holy grail of energy production, fundamentally different from current nuclear fission technologies:
- Mimics the Sun’s energy generation process
- Merges atomic nuclei to create massive energy
- Promises potentially unlimited, clean energy
Technological breakthrough
Helion’s seventh prototype, Polaris, operates at temperatures exceeding 100 million degrees Celsius. The company is optimistic about generating electricity from this revolutionary technology.
This development follows recent achievements by other nations, notably China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor, which sustained plasma for 1,000 seconds—a significant milestone in fusion research.