A Washington-based nuclear fusion startup has added another $500 million to its purse as it works toward demonstrating net electricity generation from fusion in 2024.
Helion, which has backing from Peter Thiel’s Mithril Capital and a number of other investors, will put the money toward building its 7th-generation Polaris fusion generator in hopes of proving it can create carbon-free energy for as cheap as 1 cent per kilowatt-hour.
“I’m delighted to be investing more in Helion, which is by far the most promising approach to fusion I’ve ever seen,” said investor Sam Altman, who is CEO of OpenAI and Helion’s executive chairman.
Altman put up $375 million of the new funding himself, while additional funding came from Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, Mithril Capital, and Capricorn Investment Group, all existing Helion investors.
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“On the whole, fusion has been missing from the global conversation about what we’re going to do about the climate crisis, but that is rapidly changing,” Altman told the Financial Times.
Another $1.7 billion could be made available under the arrangement, conditional on Helion reaching certain performance milestones.
The new investment adds to what a new study from the Fusion Industry Association estimated to be $1.87 billion in private funding backing global fusion companies — a study that is now already out of date with Helion’s announcement. The $500 million in funding amounts to about a 25% increase to that total.
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“You’re going to get to a point, in some parts of the world faster than others, where there’s only so much renewable electricity you can build. A modern energy grid needs a certain amount of firm baseload power,” Andrew Holland, CEO of the Fusion Industry Association, told the Washington Examiner. “Fusion can provide that.”
