Microsoft agrees to buy electricity generated from Sam Altman-backed fusion company Helion in 2028
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.
Microsoft’s agreement to buy electricity from Helion is the first time a fusion company has inked a deal to sell electricity, according to Andrew Holland, the CEO of the Fusion Industry Association.
“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.”
In 2021, Altman told CNBC he put $375 million into Helion. As of Tuesday, this is still his largest investment ever, Altman told CNBC. In total, Helion has raised raised $577 million.
Why Helion is announcing a 2028 goal now
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.
An Angus ranch in southern Oregon has become the test case for a new kind of cattle-friendly solar, hosting RUTE SunTracker’s first commercial project.
The one‑acre, 120‑kilowatt array is the first real‑world installation of RUTE’s patented, cable‑stayed solar tracker designed specifically to coexist with grazing cattle. RUTE supplies the hardware and is also acting as the developer for its first regional cattle‑plus‑solar demonstrations.
What makes the setup different is the clearance. The tracker system provides about 10 feet of headroom, with panel heights reaching up to 16 feet across the array. That gives cattle full access to the pasture underneath while allowing ranchers to keep managing the land as usual. The project is interconnected to Pacific Power’s grid in Jackson County, Oregon.
Projects like this are getting more attention as the solar industry runs into land‑use limits. In the US alone, about 30 gigawatts of new solar capacity installed last year covered roughly 150,000 acres. Meanwhile, the country has close to 120 million acres of cattle pasture, much of it facing rising heat and water stress.
That’s where agrivoltaics come in. By adding solar to working pastureland, ranchers can create a second revenue stream while improving growing conditions for forage through partial shade.
“Within weeks of installing the RUTE canopy, the crew observed leafier forage and increased legume presence inside the array compared to outside,” RUTE president Doug Krause said. “Even on irrigated pasture, direct summer sun can be too intense.”
RUTE’s work has been supported by grants from the US Department of Energy’s American‑Made Solar Prize and the US Department of Agriculture. In October, Oregon State University’s Agrivoltaics Program began quantitative studies at the site to measure pasture production, adding hard data to what ranchers are already seeing on the ground.
Next, RUTE plans to take the project on the road. This winter, the company will present at cattlemen’s association meetings as it looks for ranch partners with onsite electric loads, such as irrigation pivot systems.
“In the near term, our focus is on regional, behind‑the‑meter installations so ranchers and power producers can see the equipment operating in real conditions,” Krause said. “While interconnection timelines are long, these projects allow us to build momentum as we connect with developers and ranches on utility‑scale pipeline.”
Read more: Sunrun + NRG launch a virtual power plant to ease Texas power demand
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Environment
Tesla rental fleet that bought into Elon Musk’s self-driving lies goes bankrupt due to depreciation
Dutch leasing company Mistergreen, known for its “Tesla only” fleet and bold bets on a future of autonomous robotaxis, is reportedly facing bankruptcy. The company’s financial collapse highlights the danger of buying into Elon Musk’s claims that Tesla vehicles would become “appreciating assets”—a prediction that has faced a harsh reality check in the used EV market.
According to reports from Europe, the Dutch Tesla-only car rental firm Mistergreen has wiped out its bondholders and is selling off its operations.
Mistergreen had built its entire business model around the premise of operating a fleet of Tesla vehicles that would not only hold their value but eventually generate revenue as robotaxis.
Instead, the company has been forced to write down millions in fleet value as Tesla aggressively cut new car prices over the last two years, pulling the rug out from under used EV prices, and never delivered on its promise of consumer vehicles becoming robotaxis.
Back in 2019, Elon Musk famously claimed that Tesla vehicles were now “appreciating assets” because of their Full Self-Driving (FSD) capability. He stated:
“I think the most profound thing is that if you buy a Tesla today, I believe you are buying an appreciating asset – not a depreciating asset.”
He even went so far as to suggest that a Tesla Model 3 could be worth $100,000 to $200,000 as a revenue-generating robotaxi. Mistergreen bought into that claim and was essentially a leveraged bet on this exact scenario.
They wrote their annual report in 2022:
Our focus is driven by the fact that Tesla’s electric vehicles are currently the highest quality electric vehicles on the market (in terms of battery quality, software updates, efficiency and range, charging network and speed), their hardware and software are prepared for future self-driving cars, and the quality and range of the Tesla (supercharger) charging network is superior. As a result, there is a significant market demand for Tesla’s and we anticipate that Tesla’s will have better residual value in the future due to the good quality of the Tesla’s currently on the market.
However, as we discussed in an article earlier this year about Elon Musk’s biggest lie, the reality has been the exact opposite. Tesla vehicles have depreciated faster than the industry average, exacerbated by Tesla’s own decision to slash prices to maintain demand and by the fact that it never delivered on its promise that software updates would make its consumer vehicles autonomous without supervision.
At its peak, Mistergreen had a fleet of over 4,000 Tesla vehicles, which is impressive, but it meant that it was hit even harder by the depreciation.
For buyers, a cheaper Tesla is great news. For owners or leasing companies holding thousands of them on their books, with high residual-value guarantees, it’s a death sentence.
Mistergreen had issued bonds to buy the Tesla vehicles, but it hasn’t been able to repay them since last year. It’s unclear how much of investors’ money has been wiped out by the bet, but it is in the tens of millions of dollars.
A couple of Dutch, Belgian, and German leasing companies will purchase the remaining fleet.
Electrek reached out to CEO Florian Minderop and co-founder Mark Schreurs for comments, but we didn’t hear back by the time of publishing.
Electrek’s Take
They believed Elon and they lost tens of millions of dollars worth of investors’ money for it.
We have been saying for years that while FSD is impressive, there’s no evidence that it can reach level 4 autonomy in consumer vehicles. Banking on it turning cars into appreciating robotaxis in the near term is financial suicide.
Musk has been promising “1 million robotaxis by the end of the year” since 2020. It’s now late 2025, and while we have seen progress, we only have a small pilot program in a geo-fenced area in Texas under constant supervision, and certainly don’t have a fleet of appreciating assets.
If you bought a Tesla for $50,000 in 2022 expecting it to be worth $100,000 today, you are likely disappointed. If you bought 4,000 of them with borrowed money, you are Mistergreen.
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Kia is offering generous discounts on its EVs with low finance rates and thousands in savings across its entire lineup.
What deals is Kia currently running on its EVs?
After launching a promotion in the US offering over $10,000 off the EV6, EV9, and Niro EV this month, Kia is now extending the savings overseas.
Kia introduced a New Year’s offer in the UK on Tuesday, offering savings across its entire range, including electric vehicles.
The new deal offers generous finance deposit contributions (FDC) of up to £3,000 ($4,000) toward all EV3 models, plus the EV4 GT-Line and GT-Line S trims. A £1,500 ($2,000) FDC is available toward the EV4 Fastback (sedan), EV5, EV6, EV6 GT, EV9, and EV9 GT. The EV4 Air grade is available with a £1,000 ($1,300) FDC.
Kia is also offering a low 3.9% APR across its entire EV lineup, considerably lower than the 5.9% APR for the new Sportage and the 7.9% APR for the Picanto, K4, Niro PHEV, and Sorento.
And that’s not all. Current Kia drivers looking to upgrade can save an extra £1,000 ($1,300) with the “Kia EV Finance Upgrade” loyalty incentive.
The New Year’s EV deals run from December 17, 2025, to March 31, 2026. Kia is also offering two years of free service on all electric models through its “Discover Your Kia EV” campaign, available on all EV3, EV4, EV4 Fastback, EV5, EV6, EV9, and PV5 Passenger grades and variants.
On Friday, the EV4 and PV5 Passenger became the brand’s first vehicle eligible for the UK’s Electric Car Grant. Buyers can now earn £1,500 ($2,000) off the on-the-road purchase price for the EV4 Air and PV5 Passenger Essential and Plus trims.
Although not exactly a promotion, Kia launched the EV4 as Canada’s most affordable EV this week. Starting at under $40,000, Kia’s electric sedan (fastback) is even cheaper than the tiny Fiat 500e.
For those in the US, don’t worry, Kia is offering some pretty great year-end deals, including over $10,000 in savings across its entire EV lineup.
The 2025 Kia EV6 and Niro EV are available with up to $11,000 in customer cash, while the larger EV9 is listed with $10,500 in customer cash.
If you’re looking to finance, Kia is offering 0% APR for up to 72 months, plus $3,500 APR Bonus Cash on the EV6 and Niro EV. The three-row Kia EV9 is available with 0% APR for up to 60 months and a $3,000 APR Bonus Cash offer. In the US, Kia’s “New Traditions” sales event runs until January 2, 2026.
Kia’s deals are generous, but its sister company, Hyundai, may have it beat. You can lease a Hyundai IONIQ 5 right now for as low as $189 per month. That’s about as cheap as EV leases get right now.
If you’re wondering what deals are available in your area, you can find local offers using the links below.
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