Helical Fusion Progresses on Construction of Their First Production Power Plant

Fusion Energy

Realta Fusion demonstrated direct energy conversion (DEC) of plasma kinetic energy into electricity at the WHAM fusion machine at UW-Madison, drawing current at about 100 volts to light several bulbs. The company describes it as the first such demonstration by a commercial fusion company and points to DEC as a way to raise efficiency and lower cost in its planned mid-2030s plants.

AI, Data Centers

The AI data center buildout is pushing up costs well beyond electricity and water. A recent study finds it is also raising the price of construction materials and skilled labor while absorbing capital that non-data-center projects, including commercial fusion, are competing for. The Fusion Report looks at who pays, who benefits, and what the $6.7 trillion data center forecast means for fusion’s race for investment.

Fusion Supply Chain

As fusion energy moves closer to commercial deployment, The Fusion Report is expanding its coverage of the fusion supply chain. This piece profiles E&P Technologies, a Melbourne, Florida startup building high voltage pulsed power capacitors for fusion and aerospace, and includes an interview with co-founder and CEO Caroline Sorrick on US manufacturing and how rapidly evolving fusion requirements affect suppliers.

Fusion Energy

Helion Energy secured the licenses needed to operate a fusion power plant, clearing the way for its Orion plant in Malaga, Washington. General Atomics will collaborate with the DOE to design the first full-scale fusion blanket test facility. General Fusion’s roughly $1 billion merger with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. III cleared SEC review, with a shareholder vote set for July 6. Type One Energy added former bp CEO Bernard Looney to its board, and Inertia formed a Science and Technology Advisory Board. The Fusion Report also looks at China EAST’s run at 2027 ignition, asks whether data centers belong in space, and refreshes its Top Fusion Companies by Funding tracker at $11.4 billion across 24 companies.

China, Fusion Energy

China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), the record-setting “Artificial Sun” in Hefei, is now scheduled to attempt fusion ignition in 2027, a milestone reached only once before, by Lawrence Livermore’s National Ignition Facility in 2022. If successful, EAST would be the first to achieve ignition in a steady-state magnetic confinement device, though Commonwealth Fusion Systems’ SPARC is racing toward the same goal on the same timeline. The Fusion Report breaks down what ignition actually requires (the Lawson Criteria of temperature, density, and confinement time) and assesses how close each machine really is. EAST leads on pathfinding plasma physics while SPARC targets Q > 1, but neither has yet crossed into a self-heating burning plasma. The bigger question: would a 2027 ignition milestone finally ignite broad investor interest across the fusion sector?

Data Centers

With SpaceX freshly public and its stock up 28% over the IPO price, talk of putting AI data centers in orbit is back in the headlines. The Fusion Report looks past the one obvious upside, nearly unlimited solar power in a sun-synchronous orbit, and tallies the costs that doom the idea: $160M to $280M per megawatt just to launch, two-year hardware refresh cycles, dense low-earth-orbit debris, space weather, and the near-impossibility of radiating away server heat in a vacuum. Against a ship-borne data center that fits in a shipping container and cools itself for a fraction of the price, orbital compute simply doesn’t pencil out. The verdict: outside of analyzing data that originates in space, orbital data centers are not a great idea.

Fusion Energy

The Department of Energy released its finalized Fusion Science and Technology Roadmap on June 9, built with input from more than 800 scientists and engineers, targeting commercial fusion by the mid-2030s. The same day, Tennessee became the first state in the nation to regulate fusion machines, clearing a path for Type One Energy’s Infinity Two plant near Oak Ridge. On June 10, DOE approved Xcimer Energy’s 724-page Athena preconceptual power plant design. The Fusion Report also goes deep on Realta Fusion’s Hammir-DT tandem mirror power plant design and Thea Energy’s collaboration with NVIDIA, Synopsys, Argonne, and PPPL to build a digital twin of its Helios stellarator.

Fusion Funding

Helion Energy closed a $465 million Series G led by Thrive Capital at a $15.5 billion post-money valuation, the largest fusion VC round of 2026. The raise brings Helion’s lifetime private funding to $1.5 billion and makes it the second most funded fusion company after Commonwealth Fusion Systems. The capital will expand U.S. manufacturing capacity and support deployment of Orion, the company’s first power plant, now under construction in Malaga, Washington.