Helion Energy, the US nuclear fusion start-up backed by Sam Altman and Peter Thiel, has told the FT it "remains on track" to supply Microsoft with commercial electricity through the grid in 2028 — a deadline that would make it the first fusion company ever to do so. CFO Pragav Jain said the Washington-state generator being built for Microsoft would be a "sub-scale commercial unit", less efficient than the full-scale systems Helion hopes to deploy later. Helion has also signed a 500-megawatt deal with steelmaker Nucor for 2030, and Axios reported last month that OpenAI was in talks to buy electricity from the company.

The claim divides the sector. Helion is one of the best-funded fusion players — $1bn raised, a $5.4bn valuation in its latest round — but smaller than Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which has raised about $3bn and plans its first commercial plant in the early 2030s with Google as offtake customer. US government scientists reached "net energy gain" (more power out than in to trigger fusion) but no start-up has matched that, let alone built a commercial plant. Rivals argue Helion's 2028 timeline "doesn't add up" and criticise its silence on how it will handle high-energy neutrons, which damage reactor structures. Helion says it is developing a material with "its own kind of healing mechanism" but has disclosed little to protect IP from "copycats". According to the Fusion Industry Association, 89% of private fusion companies believe the technology will be on the grid by the 2030s.

Helion's edge, if real, is its design. It does not plan to use turbines; instead it would generate electricity directly from the changing magnetic field as the plasma expands, inducing current in surrounding coils. One fusion investor described this as "the holy grail" — in theory, it would let Helion make commercially useful electricity with a smaller net energy gain than rivals need. The company is testing a pre-commercial machine meant to "demonstrate electricity from fusion", but Jain declined to say whether it was close to break-even. Source: Financial Times, 18 April 2026, Ryohtaroh Satoh.