A view of the end of Helion’s seventh generation prototype, the Polaris.
Photo courtesy Helion
Microsoft said Wednesday it has signed a power purchase agreement with nuclear fusion startup Helion Energy to buy electricity from it in 2028.
The deal is a notable vote of confidence for fusion, which is the way the sun makes power and holds promise of being able to generate nearly unlimited clean power, if it can be harnessed and commercialized on earth. For decades, fusion been lauded as the holy grail of clean energy — tantalizing because it’s limitless and clean, but always just out of reach.
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As responding to climate change has become an increasingly urgent goal for companies and countries around the globe, investors have poured $5 billion into private fusion companies looking to turn that holy grail into electrons flowing through wires.
“This is the first time that I know of that a company has a power purchase agreement signed,” Holland told CNBC. “No one has delivered electricity, and Helion’s goal of 2028 is aggressive, but they have a strong plan for how to get there.”
Helion was founded in 2013 and currently has about 150 employees, with headquarters in Everett, Wash. One of the early and most significant investors in Helion, Sam Altman, is also a founder of OpenAI, the artificial intelligence organization that developed the chat platform ChatGPT, in which Microsoft has invested many billions of dollars. Altman believes the two deals are equally important and correlated components of the future he sees for humanity.
“My vision of the future and why I love these two companies is that if we can drive the cost intelligence and the cost of energy way, way down, the quality of life for all of us will increase incredibly,” Altman told CNBC. “If we can make AI systems more and more powerful for less and less money — same thing we are trying to do with energy at Helion — I view these two projects as spiritually very aligned.”
Samuel H. Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, speaks to media after meeting Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the Prime Minister’s office in Tokyo on April 10, 2023.
The Yomiuri Shimbun | AP
If demand for and use of artificial intelligence continues to increase, then that will increase demand for energy, too.
The potential of fusion is “unbelievably huge,” Altman told CNBC. “If we can get this to work — if we can really deliver on the dream of abundant, cheap, safe, clean energy that will transform society. It’s why I’ve been so passionate about this project for so long.”
As part of the power purchase agreement, Helion is expected to have its fusion generation device online by 2028 and to reach its target power generation of 50 megawatts or more within an agreed-upon one-year ramp up period. When the fusion device is fully up to speed producing 50 megawatts of energy, it will be able to power the equivalent of approximately 40,000 homes in Washington state.
While Helion’s deal with Microsoft is to get 50 megawatts online, the company eventually aims to produce a gigawatt of electricity, which is one billion watts, or 20 million times the 50 megawatts it is selling to Microsoft.
Microsoft will pay for the megawatt hours of electricity as Helion delivers them to the grid.
“This is a real PPA, so there’s financial penalties if Helion can’t deliver power. So we’ve really put our skin in the game on this too — that we believe we can deliver this power and are committed to it with our own financial incentives,” David Kirtley, CEO at Helion, told CNBC.
Helion’s co-founders. From left to right: Chris Pihl (CTO), David Kirtley (CEO), George Votroubek (Director of Research).
Photo courtesy Helion
Altman advocated for the two companies to work together, he told CNBC, but the deal is the result of work Helion has done independently. “It was not my doing,” he said.
Microsoft and Helion have been working together for years, Kirtley told CNBC. “The first visit we had from the Microsoft team was probably three of our prototypes ago, so many years ago. And then we’ve been working very closely with their data center technology team here in Redmond,” Kirtley said.
After all, Microsoft needs power and has aggressive climate goals. Microsoft has a goal to have 100% of its electricity consumption, 100% of the time, matched by zero-carbon energy purchases by 2030. Carbon-free energy includes hydro, nuclear and renewables for Microsoft, a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC.
“We are optimistic that fusion energy can be an important technology to help the world transition to clean energy,” Brad Smith, president at Microsoft, said in a written statement. “Helion’s announcement supports our own long term clean energy goals and will advance the market to establish a new, efficient method for bringing more clean energy to the grid, faster.”
An electrical engineer preparing for a test at Helion.
Photo courtesy Helion
For Helion to be able to deliver electricity generated by fusion to customers requires years of advance planning on the transmission and regulatory fronts.
In that way, announcing a contract now to sell electricity in 2028 gives Helion time to plan and to pick a location in Washington State to put this new fusion device.
“One reason we’re doing the announcement today is that so we can be working with the communities involved, we can be working with regulators, and the power utility on citing this right now,” Kirtley told CNBC. “Even five years is a short amount of time to be hooked up to the grid. And we want to make sure that we can do that.”
Indeed, the transmission system in the United States, meaning the series of wires that carry electricity from where it is generated to where it is used, is largely tapped out. Getting new power generation connected to the grid can take years. Helion is working with Constellation to secure its transmission needs.
‘We’re not here to build systems in a lab’
The best-known pathway to commercializing fusion is with a donut-shaped device called a tokamak. The international fusion project under construction in Southern France called ITER is building a tokamak, and Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a fusion start-up spun out of MIT which has raised more than $2 billion in funding, is using tokamak technology. For comparison, CFS plans to have its first power plant on the grid and selling electricity in the early 2030s.
Helion is not building a tokamak. It is building a long narrow device called a Field Reversed Configuration.
An infographic showing how Helion’s fusion technology works.
Infographic from Helion
Broadly speaking, Helion’s approach involves shooting plasma (the fourth state of matter after solid, liquid and gas) from both ends of the device at a velocity greater than one million miles per hour. The two streams smash into each other, creating a superhot dense plasma, where fusion occurs.
Helion is currently building its seventh-generation fusion machine, named Polaris, which it aims to produce electricity with by next year, Kirtley told CNBC.
“We’re not here to build systems in a lab. We’re here to sell electricity. This is always been the dream,” Altman told CNBC.
So far, Helion has been able to generate energy with its fusion prototypes, but it has not yet built a device that creates more electricity than it uses to run the fusion device. So the firm has a lot of work ahead.
To that, Altman says: “There were a lot of people that were doubting A.I. six months ago, too.”
“Either the technology here is going to work or not. There’s a lot of huge challenges still to figure out — how are we going to get the cost super-low, how are we going to manufacture at scale — but on the ability to actually do the physics, we feel very confident,” Altman told CNBC. “And I think it’s fine for people to doubt it. But also the way that you eventually reduced that doubt is to show to show people it actually works in the commercial setting, like delivering on this deal.”
Helion has been making progress on some key hurdles.
For example, the company has started making its own capacitors, which are sort of like super-efficient batteries and one of Helion’s very significant capital costs.
It has also started to make the very rare fuel it uses, helium three, which is a very rare type of helium with one extra neutron. It used used to get helium-three from the U.S. government strategic reserves.
Next up, Helion has to demonstrate that its devices can work reliably for long periods of time, and Kirtley has a team working on durability of the components used in the device.
If Helion can be successful, it’s going to be a landmark for the entire fusion industry.
“This really signals that a fusion era is coming. And we’re all very excited about it,” Kirtley told CNBC.
The World Liberty Financial website arranged on a smartphone in New York, US, on Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2025.
Gabby Jones | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The Senate on Tuesday passed the GENIUS Act, a landmark bill that for the first time establishes federal guardrails for U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins and creates a regulated pathway for private companies to issue digital dollars with the blessing of the federal government.
“The GENIUS Act will protect consumers, enable responsible innovation, and safeguard the dominance of the U.S. dollar,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., one of the sponsors of the bill, in a statement.
The bill still faces hurdles in the Republican-held House, but passage in the Senate signals a turning point — not just for the technology, but for the political clout behind it.
The GENIUS Act, short for the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act, sets guardrails for the industry, including full reserve backing, monthly audits, and anti-money laundering compliance.
It also opens the door to a broader range of issuers, including banks, fintechs, and major retailers looking to launch their own stablecoins or integrate them into existing payment systems.
The legislation grants sweeping authority to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who last week told a Senate appropriations subcommittee in a hearing that the U.S. stablecoin market could grow nearly eightfold to over $2 trillion in the next few years.
The bill’s passage drew sharp criticism from Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., who accused Republicans of “rubberstamping Trump’s crypto corruption,” and allowing the president to sell “access to the government for personal profit.”
Merkley had pushed for an amendment to bar elected officials from personally profiting off digital assets, but said GOP lawmakers blocked all efforts to hold a floor vote.
In May, Senate Democrats unveiled the “End Crypto Corruption Act,” spearheaded by Merkley and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, meant to prohibit elected officials and senior executive branch personnel and their families from issuing or endorsing digital assets.
GENIUS now heads to the House, which has its own version of a stablecoin bill dubbed STABLE. Both prohibit yield-bearing consumer stablecoins — but diverge on who regulates what.
The Senate’s version centralizes oversight with Treasury, while the House splits authority between the Federal Reserve, the Comptroller of the Currency, and others. Reconciling the two could take a while, according to congressional aides.
The GENIUS Act was supposed to be the easiest crypto bill to pass, but took months to reach the Senate floor, failed once, and passed only after fierce negotiations.
“We thought it would be easiest to start with stablecoins,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., said on stage in Las Vegas at this year’s Bitcoin 2025 conference, which focused heavily on stablecoins.
“It has been extremely difficult. I had no idea how hard this was going to be,” she said.
At the same event, Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., echoed the frustration: “It has been murder to get them there,” he said of the 18 Senate Democrats who ultimately crossed the aisle.
Disrupting legacy rails
Stablecoins are a subset of cryptocurrencies pegged to the value of real-world assets. About 99% of all stablecoins are tethered to the price of the U.S. dollar.
They offer instant settlement and lower transaction fees, cutting out the middlemen and directly threatening legacy payment rails.
Shopify has already rolled out USDC-powered payments through Coinbase and Stripe. Bank of America‘s CEO said last week at a Morgan Stanley conference that the bank is having conversations with the industry and individually exploring stablecoin issuance.
Deutsche Bank found that stablecoin transactions hit $28 trillion last year, surpassing that of Mastercard and Visa, combined.
Still, there are limits. The GENIUS Act restricts non-financial large tech companies from directly issuing stablecoins unless they establish or partner with regulated financial entities — a provision meant to blunt monopoly concerns.
JPMorgan Chase, meanwhile, is taking a different route, launching JPMD, a deposit token designed to function like a stablecoin but tightly integrated with the traditional banking system.
Issued on Coinbase’s Base blockchain, JPMD is only available to institutional clients and offers features like 24/7 settlement and interest payments — part of the broader push by legacy finance to adapt to the stablecoin era without ceding ground to crypto-native firms.
Trump’s stake
While Democrats tried to amend the bill to prevent the president from profiting off crypto ventures, the final legislation only bars members of Congress and their families from doing so.
Trump’s first financial disclosure as president, released Friday, revealed he earned at least $57 million in 2024 alone from token sales tied to World Liberty Financial, a crypto platform closely aligned with his political brand.
He holds nearly 16 billion WLFI governance tokens — the crypto equivalent of voting shares — which could be worth close to $1 billion on paper, based on prior private sales.
That’s just one slice of the Trump crypto pie.
The family’s ventures, which include the controversial $TRUMP meme coin, a $2.5 billion bitcoin Treasury and proposed bitcoin and ether ETFs via Truth.Fi, and a newly launched mining firm called American Bitcoin, reflect an aggressive push into digital finance.
Forbes recently estimated Trump’s crypto holdings at nearly $1 billion, lifting his total net worth to $5.6 billion.
While Ferrari is pushing back EV plans, BYD is stepping in with its first luxury electric super sedan. BYD kicked off deliveries of the Yangwang U7, a four-motor, flagship electric sedan powerhouse packing nearly 1,300 horsepower.
BYD has a new luxury EV sports sedan to beat Ferrari
Although it was due out next year, Ferrari is delaying plans for its second EV for at least another two years. Two sources close to the matter told Reuters that the decision is due to sluggish demand for EV sports cars.
One source claimed that “real, sustainable demand is non-existent for an electric sports car” and that Ferrari’s second EV is not expected to arrive before 2028.
Meanwhile, BYD officially kicked off deliveries of the Yangwang U7 this month, its first electric luxury super sedan.
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Packing four electric motors, the Yangwang U7 delivers up to 1,287 horsepower (960 kW), good for a 0 to 62 mph (0 to 100 km/h) sprint in just 2.9 seconds. It also includes a massive 135.5 kWh battery, providing a CLTC range of nearly 450 miles (720 km).
BYD delivers the first Yangwang U7 luxury EV sedans to owners (Source: Yangwang)
BYD’s flagship electric sedan is just as smart as it is powerful. The Yangwang U7 features BYD’s “God’s Eye A” ADAS system, which incorporates three Lidars, five radars, 13 high-definition cameras, and 12 ultrasonic radars.
The system offers smart driving and safety features, including Navigate on Autopilot (NOA) for city and highway use, automated parking, and more.
The interior is centered around a “Star Ring Cockpit” design with BYD’s DiLink smart cockpit system and DeepSeek AI. You can see that there is plenty of screen space, featuring a 12.8″ curved center display and a 23″ driver display. Front and rear passengers get added 6″ entertainment screens.
Like other vehicles under BYD’s luxury Yangwang brand, the U7 features its Disus-Z suspension system, enabling it to “dance” and even jump over things on the road.
BYD Yangwang U7 electric sedan (Source: Yangwang)
The U7 is 5,265 mm in length, 1,998 mm in width, and 1,517 mm in height, which is slightly larger than the Porsche Panamera.
BYD’s luxury EV sedan starts at just 628,000 yuan, or about $87,000 in China. The four-seater variant costs 708,000 yuan, or roughly $98,500, which is still about half the cost of the most affordable Ferrari.
BYD Yangwang U8 SUV (left) and U7 luxury EV sedan (right) Source: Yangwang
Ferrari still plans to launch its first fully electric vehicle during its Capital Markets Day on October 9, with deliveries kicking off the same month. We got a sneak peek of Ferrari’s first EV earlier this year, after it was spotted in public with a crossover-like design.
According to the sources, the second EV will be more of a high-volume model, with Ferrari planning to deliver around 5,000 to 6,000 units over five years, similar to its typical models.
Ferrari’s first fully electric vehicle won’t be cheap. It’s expected to cost at least 500,000 euros, or over $500,000.
Electrek’s Take
Will BYD’s new Yangwang U7 prove that Ferrari is wrong that luxury EV sports cars don’t sell? Several Chinese EV makers are already proving it, such as Xiaomi, which sold over 200,000 SU7 models in under a year.
In April, BYD’s ultra-luxury Yangwang brand delivered its 10,000th vehicle, following the launch of its first model, the U8, in September 2023.
Yangwang sold 139 vehicles in May, including 22 U7s, 12 U9 electric supercars, and 94 U8 SUVs. As more sales data is released, we will see if Ferrari’s theory that demand for an electric luxury sports car is “non-existent.”
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EV charger operating system manufacturer ChargeLab just launched OpenOCPP, a free and open-source software stack that could majorly simplify life for EV charger manufacturers.
OpenOCPP is the first hardware-agnostic, pre-certified embedded software stack supporting OCPP 1.6J and 2.0.1. In plain terms, it helps EV chargers speak the same language as charging station management systems (CSMS) – and it works across just about any hardware setup, from a lightweight ESP32 microcontroller to a full Linux embedded system.
Right now, most EV charger companies have to spend big on building and certifying their own firmware to support OCPP. That takes 18 to 24 months, slows down rollout, and clogs up innovation. With OpenOCPP, ChargeLab says the timeline shrinks to just a few weeks.
“We’ve designed an incredibly memory-efficient embedded software stack that can run on any underlying hardware,” said ChargeLab CTO Ehsan Mokthari, who also co-chairs the Open Charge Alliance’s OCPP 2.lite working group. “OpenOCPP also comes with enterprise-grade security pre-built, so manufacturers can get up and running quickly.”
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ChargeLab is a member of the Open Charge Alliance (OCA), the group behind OCPP. OpenOCPP is being added to the OCA Validation Test Bed, which helps companies verify that their products conform to OCPP standards.
OpenOCPP brings a lot to the table for EV charger makers. It comes with built-in security that meets OCPP 2.0.1’s toughest standards. It doesn’t lock manufacturers into any one provider – it works with ChargeLab’s CSMS or any other backend that supports OCPP. It passes the OCA’s conformance test tool right out of the box and is ready for California’s CTEP requirements. It’s designed to run on microcontrollers with as little as 4MB of memory. And thanks to its modular design and open-source Apache 2.0 license, it’s ready for whatever OCPP throws at the industry next.
One company already using OpenOCPP is FractalEV, a North American Level 2 EV charger manufacturer. They’ve installed units using a beta version of the software across over 20 CSMS platforms.
“ChargeLab’s embedded software stack helped us launch faster,” said FractalEV founder Chris Mendes. “With OpenOCPP going open source, there is really no reason to look elsewhere for an OCPP communication stack.”
OpenOCPP is already running on over 4,000 chargers through manufacturer beta programs, many deployed by major corporate customers with tight cybersecurity standards. As OpenOCPP exits beta today, ChargeLab invites more manufacturers and developers to the project.
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