ENABLING A FUTURE WITH UNLIMITED CLEAN ELECTRICITY

Helion was founded in Washington State by Dr. David Kirtley, Chris Pihl, Dr. John Slough, and Dr. George Votroubek with the goal to build a fusion system designed for commercial electricity.

Grande, Helion’s 4th fusion prototype, is developed to test high field operation. Grande achieves magnetic field compression of 4 tesla, forms cm-scale FRCs, and reaches plasma temperatures of 5 keV. Grande outperforms any other private fusion company.

Helion demonstrates the first direct magnetic energy recovery from a subscale pulsed magnetic system, utilizing modern high-voltage insulated gate bipolar transistors to recover energy at over 95% round-trip efficiency for over 1 million pulses. In a smaller system, the team demonstrates the formation of more than 1 billion FRCs.

Venti, Helion’s 5th protoype, with support from ARPA-E, is constructed to test the scalability of the results from IPA-C and Grande. Venti produces magnetic fields of 7 tesla and reaches ion temperatures of 2 keV at high density reaches ion temperatures of 2 keV at high density. Fusion output is the highest ever recorded by private or pulsed magnetic fusion.

Trenta, Helion’s 6th fusion prototype, demonstrates the largest and most energetic high-beta or FRC fusion plasmas ever created. Trenta compresses FRC plasmas to over 8 tesla, reaches plasma temperatures greater than 9 keV (100M°C) (ion temperatures over 8 keV and electron temperatures over 2 keV), and proves sufficient plasma confinement to generate electricity.

Raised $500M to build 7th fusion prototype, Polaris.

Helion moves its headquarters from Redmond, WA to Everett, WA. In Everett, the team begins to construct Polaris, Helion’s 7th fusion prototype.

Helion signs customer agreements with the industry's first two customers: Microsoft and Nucor.

Helion completes initial Polaris construction and achieves first plasma pulses in its 7th fusion prototype.

Raises $425 million to scale manufacturing, forms largest FRCs ever created in Polaris; breaks ground on Orion, the world's first fusion power plant.

Polaris becomes first privately funded fusion energy machine to do bulk thermonuclear fusion with deuterium-tritium fuel and sets record with plasma temperatures of 150 million degrees Celsius.