Helion secures $175 million to build advanced power semiconductors that double fusion plant output
Federal funding establishes the first U.S. production facility for wide-bandgap switching chips, halving electrical losses for Helion’s 2028 Microsoft contract.
Technology news
Commercial fusion energy developer Helion announced Thursday that it has been awarded $175 million in federal funding to engineer and manufacture custom wide-bandgap power semiconductors in Washington State. The capital award accelerates production of specialized high-frequency switching electronics essential to operating Helion’s pulsed magnetic compression fusion generators.[3]
In conventional fusion architectures and electrical transmission equipment, solid-state power switches lose between 5% and 10% of total electrical energy as waste heat during rapid switching cycles. In Helion’s recovery-based system—which directly extracts electrical energy from magnetic field expansion rather than boiling water into steam—reducing circuit loss produces disproportionate efficiency gains. Helion co-founder and Chief Executive Officer David Kirtley stated that cutting switching losses by half effectively doubles the net power output of the commercial reactor.[3]
The dedicated packaging and testing facility will supply Helion's Orion generator, currently under construction to satisfy a commercial commitment to deliver at least 50 megawatts of electricity to Microsoft’s datacenter grid by 2028. The manufacturing facility will also represent the first domestic fab capable of producing multi-kilovolt power electronics at scale, serving secondary applications in industrial electric arc furnaces, defense radar arrays, and municipal wastewater treatment systems.[3]
Our take: Helion’s push into custom silicon underscores an underappreciated dimension of the clean energy transition: net electricity generation in pulsed magnetic fusion is constrained as much by the physics of power semiconductor switching speeds as by plasma confinement. By onshoring wide-bandgap chip fabrication, Helion removes a critical supply chain bottleneck. Nevertheless, achieving sustained net electricity output from fusion by 2028 remains an extraordinarily aggressive engineering deadline that no private entity has yet demonstrated.