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.
Ford is jumping into the battery energy storage business, betting that booming demand from data centers and the electric grid can absorb the EV battery capacity it says it’s not using.
To achieve this, Ford plans to repurpose its existing EV battery manufacturing capacity in Glendale, Kentucky, into a dedicated hub for manufacturing battery energy storage systems.
Ford pivots from EVs to battery storage for data centers
Ford says it will invest about $2 billion over the next two years to scale the new business. The Kentucky site will be converted to build advanced battery energy storage systems larger than 5 megawatt-hours, including LFP prismatic cells, BESS modules, and 20-foot DC container systems — the kind of hardware increasingly used by data centers, utilities, and large-scale industrial companies.
The company plans to bring initial production online within 18 months, leaning on its manufacturing experience and licensed battery technology. By late 2027, Ford expects the business to deploy at least 20 gigawatt-hours of energy storage annually.
The move follows a joint venture disposition agreement reached last week between Ford, SK On, SK Battery America, and BlueOval SK. Under the agreement, a Ford subsidiary will independently own and operate the Kentucky battery plants, while SK On will fully own and operate the Tennessee battery plant.
Ford is also planning a separate energy storage play in Michigan. At BlueOval Battery Park Michigan in Marshall, the company will produce smaller amp-hour LFP prismatic cells for residential energy storage systems. That plant is on track to begin manufacturing in 2026, and it will also supply batteries for Ford’s upcoming midsize electric truck — the first model built on the company’s new Universal EV Platform.
Electrek’s Take
Overall, the shift reflects Ford’s broader push toward what it calls “higher-return opportunities.” Alongside taking a step backward to add more gas-powered trucks and vans to its US manufacturing footprint, Ford says it will no longer produce some larger EVs, such as the Lightning F-150, where softer demand and higher costs are resulting from the lack of support for EVs by the Trump administration. (Batteries produced at the Glendale plant were for the all-electric Ford F-150 Lightning. The best-selling electric truck in the US in Q3, before the federal tax credit expired, was the Ford F-150 Lightning, with 10,005 EVs sold, a 39.7% year-over-year increase.)
With tax credits eliminated and regulatory uncertainty, Ford is pivoting to adjacent markets, including grid-scale and residential energy storage, to keep its battery plants running and justify billions in sunk investment.
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Stellantis may have backed away from planned EVs like the all-electric Ram REV and range-topping Dodge Charger Daytona R/T EV, but the company isn’t standing still. A newly awarded patent outlines an innovative, foam-based thermal runaway suppression system that’s built into an EV’s battery pack.
The indisputable fact of the matter is that electric vehicles catch fire far less often — and far less frequently — than their combustion-powered brethren. Still, a number of highly-publicized early Tesla fires and poorly managed recall on the first-gen Chevy Bolt have linked “electric car” and “fire” in the minds of many Americans, and the ones who have been waiting to test the EV waters until a better safety solution came along are going to absolutely love this latest setup from Chrysler parent company Stellantis.
MoparInsiders is reporting on a new Stellantis patent awarded on a proactive battery safety system that’s designed to stop thermal runaway (read: fire) before it can cascade through an entire EV battery pack.
Rather than relying solely on passive barriers or post-event containment, Stellantis’ freshly patented system uses strategically placed foam channels and deployment mechanisms that can flood the affected cells with high insulation foam when abnormal heat is detected in a cell, isolating the problem area and dramatically slowing (if not outright stopping) the chain reaction that leads to catastrophic battery failure.
The patent describes an electric car battery that, on the outside, will look familiar to EV enthusiasts, but there are some key differences “layered in” around the familiar bits. These include:
- A bladder filled with a fire-retardant chemical; located close to the battery cells, typically between the cells and the top of the pack. It’s made from a flexible polymer, so it can be punctured when needed
- Two sets of blades; the first aimed at the bladder, ready to pierce it and release the fire-retardant chemical while the second targets specific points on the coolant inlet line, outlet line, or heat sinks to rupture them and release cooling foam directly where it’s needed
- Special coolant line sections; designed with small sealed apertures that closed off with a soft plug material that’s easy for the blades to pierce but strong enough to maintain pressure during normal operation
- Actuation devices tied to a controller; that push the blades into the bladder and coolant components when a thermal event is detected
Special coolant lines
The system relies on a suite of existing temperature sensors throughout the battery pack, and seems like a viable enough solution to a problem that, while rare, certainly exists — and which looms large over America’s Early Majority tech adopters.
As for me, I think Stellantis should focus on bringing more compelling products to market and stop looking for ways to blame the customer, market, and government for its inability to sell Jeep products that, apparently, have enough markup to cover nearly $30,000 in discounts to help dealers move their metal. I look forward to hearing about your take in the comments.
SOURCE | IMAGES: US Patent Office, via MoparInsiders.
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It’s official. The all-electric pickup is dead, but Ford is promising the F-150 Lightning EREV will be “every bit as revolutionary” as it shakes up EV plans once again.
Ford reveals next-gen F-150 Lightning EREV
Ford confirmed production of the current F-150 Lightning has ended as part of its updated Ford+ plan, which the company revealed on Monday.
The changes come as part of a broader shift from larger EVs, like the Lightning, to smaller, more affordable models.
While Ford still plans to launch lower-cost EVs based on its Universal EV Platform, the company is expanding its hybrid and extended range electric vehicle (EREV) lineup. By 2030, Ford expects 50% of its global volume to be hybrids, EREVs, and EVs, up from 17% in 2025.
As part of its new plans, Ford said the next-generation F-150 Lightning will switch to an EREV powertrain. It will be assembled at the Rouge EV Center in Dearborn, Michigan, replacing the current all-electric pickup.
With production of the current-generation Lightning now concluded, Ford is sending workers from the Rouge EV Center to its Dearborn Truck Plant as it doubles down on gas and hybrids.
During its Q3 earnings call last month, Ford said the electric pickup would remain paused following a fire at Novelis’ plant in New York that disrupted aluminum supply.
The F-150 Lightning is a “groundbreaking” vehicle, according to Doug Field, Ford’s chief EV, digital, and design officer, that showed an electric pickup can be a great F-Series.
Field claims the “next-generation Lightning EREV is every bit as revolutionary.” It will still offer 100% electric power delivery, sub-5-second acceleration, an estimated combined range of 700+ miles, and it “tows like a locomotive.”
Ford also plans to replace its electric commercial van for North America with affordable gas- and hybrid-powered versions. It will be assembled at Ford’s Ohio Assembly Plant.
The move comes as part of Ford’s plans to launch five new affordable vehicles by the end of the decade, four of which will be assembled in the US. Ford also plans to offer gas, hybrid, and EREV options across nearly every vehicle in its lineup by then.
The first vehicle based on Ford’s new Universal EV Platform will be a midsize electric pickup, starting at around $30,000. It’s expected to be about the size of the Ranger or Maverick.
The news comes after SK On announced last week that it planned to end its joint venture with Ford to build EV batteries at three US gigafactories.
Ford is now planning to use the wholly owned EV battery plants in Kentucky and Michigan to launch a new battery energy storage business. The company plans to begin shipping BESS systems in 2027, with an annual capacity of 20 GWh.
“The operating reality has changed, and we are redeploying capital into higher-return growth opportunities: Ford Pro, our market-leading trucks and vans, hybrids, and high-margin opportunities like our new battery energy storage business,” CEO Jim Farley said on Monday.
The changes are designed to improve profitability and returns. Ford’s EV business, Model e, is now expected to reach profitability by 2029 with improvements in 2026.
Model e lost another $1.4 billion in Q3, bringing the total to $3.6 billion through September. Around $3 billion was due to its current EVs, while the other $600 million was spent on its next-gen models.
Although sales of the F-150 Lightning dropped 60.8% last month following the expiration of the $7,500 federal EV tax credit, Ford’s electric pickup remained the best-selling pickup in the US through September.
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