— Agility Robotics named Michael Beer as its chief financial officer. Current CFO and chief operating officer Jennifer Hunter will transition to serving exclusively as COO.

“Michael brings outstanding public company finance and capital markets experience, while Jennifer, with her prior experience as a publicly traded COO, will focus exclusively on scaling our operational excellence and manufacturing capabilities,” said CEO Peggy Johnson, in a statement.

The Salem, Ore.-based startup, whose two-legged Digit robots have been tested inside Amazon warehouses, is set to become the first publicly traded U.S. company dedicated solely to humanoid robots, the company announced last month.

Beer joins Agility Robotics from the California energy storage company Energy Vault, where he was CFO for two years. Past roles include venture partner at Vest Coast Capital and CFO at FreeWire Technologies.

— Seattle-area tech veteran Matt Fisher has taken the role of CTO for London-based Efekta Education. The company is developing an agentic teaching and learning platform.

“I’ve spent my career building technologies that help people learn, connect and achieve more. What attracted me to Efekta is its clear vision for using AI to enhance learning, support teachers and
make high-quality education accessible to more people around the world,” Fisher said.

Last August, Fisher joined immersive media startup Adventr as a late-stage co-founder. Prior to that, he was co-founder and CTO at Daydream, a startup that raised a $50 million seed round last year to shake up the way people find and buy clothing online. Other past roles include leadership at Amazon, Microsoft, Nordstrom and Auth0.

— There is another name to add to the raft of departures from Microsoft‘s security leadership.

Rahul Prakash, head of product for Microsoft Security Copilot, shared that he’s leaving his role after nearly a decade with the company.

“As any Identity professional will tell you, the world of [Identity Access Management] is far more intricate than people realize, and it’s being rewritten for the world of AI agents. At Microsoft, I’ve had the privilege of going deep into this space…” Prakash said on LinkedIn.

On Monday, GeekWire reported that Rudra “Rudy” Mitra, who spent more than 27 years at Microsoft, was joining Amazon Web Services as vice president of security services. Other recent departures include Krishna Kumar Parthasarathy, who resigned at after nearly three decades.

— Nancy Lipson has joined Zap Energy as chief legal officer. The Everett, Wash.-based company is in pursuit of fusion energy, and recently expanded its scope to include next generation nuclear fission.

Lipson was previously executive vice president and CLO for the gold mining giant Newmont Corporation, departing after 18 years in 2023.

“Nancy’s deep expertise in areas of corporate strategy, governance, compliance, and sustainability will be key assets as Zap pursues its integrated approach to advanced nuclear,” Zap posted on LinkedIn.

— Jyoti Shukla was named chief product and technology officer at KEXP, a nonprofit radio station serving Seattle and the Bay Area. The station includes community and performance spaces, and features wide-ranging music genres.

“There is a lot of meaningful work ahead, and I’m excited to keep learning, building, and partnering with an amazing team as we shape what’s next,” Shukla said on LinkedIn.

Prior to taking the role, Shukla served on KEXP’s board of directors and was senior vice president of product design at SiriusXM. She has also worked in tech leadership roles at Nordstrom and Starbucks, and started her career at Microsoft.

— ZEV Co-op, a Washington-based nonprofit EV carshare cooperative, announced Ry Armstrong as its new executive director. Armstrong was previously at Sustainable Seattle, where they served as co-director. 

— Tirzah VanDamme has joined Gagen MacDonald as senior director of AI and digital transformation. She brings more than 20 years of experience and was most recently at Microsoft.

— The Washington State Academy of Sciences (WSAS) announced the election four new board members. They are:

• Amanda Boyd, executive director of Native American Programs and Professor in the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine at Washington State Universit
• Mary Czerwinski, former research manager at Microsoft Research
• John Stein, former science and research director of NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center
• Judith Wasserheit, professor emerita of Global Health, Medicine, and Epidemiology at the University of Washington

WSAS also elected 30 new members, who will assist the organization in providing scientific and technical information to state policymakers.

They include 26 scientists and engineers elected by their WSAS peers and four members recently elected to the National Academies of Science, Engineering, or Medicine or awarded the Nobel Prize and who reside or work in Washington state.

The members include 11 UW professors and eight from WSU, five researchers from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, three from Fred Hutch Cancer Center, and three at private companies, with some participants holding roles at multiple institutions.

General Fusion’s stock is trading up after it became the first fusion energy company to go public on a major exchange, debuting Monday on Nasdaq.

The launch of GFUZ stock coincided with the release of the Fusion Industry Association’s annual report, which reflected that same investor enthusiasm: private funding for fusion companies totaled $4.5 billion over the past 12 months. One of the biggest rounds went to Helion Energy, a Seattle-area company that raised $465 million last month, bringing its total investment to $1.5 billion.

Soaring energy demand from AI data centers has helped drive interest in the sector as an ambitious slate of companies is building devices that create and contain plasma — a super-hot, fourth state of matter required for atom-smashing fusion to occur.

For decades, researchers have chased this clean energy source, aiming to replicate the reactions that power the sun, a churning ball of plasma. While significant progress has been made, big technical hurdles remain, and it’s uncertain when the goal will be reached.

But the promise of fusion is so enticing that the risks appear worth it for many investors.

“A commercial fusion industry is a world-changing industry, and the returns on investment will be massive,” said Andrew Holland, CEO of the Fusion Industry Association, in the foreword to the report.

The sector has landed more than $13.3 billion from venture capitalists over the past five years, according to the annual survey. After decades of government support via national labs and R&D grants, the private sector is now picking up the majority of the tab for fusion’s progress.

One of the important milestones in the pursuit of fusion is “scientific breakeven” — the point at which the output of a fusion reaction matches the energy input to a device’s plasma, without including the rest of the system’s power needs. Scientific breakeven was first hit by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 2022, but has not been reached by a private venture.

To be financially viable, the fusion companies need to go further, capturing more energy from fusion than required to operate their whole system.

The new report includes profiles of 56 companies worldwide that are pursuing fusion, including four based in the Pacific Northwest: General Fusion, Helion, Zap Energy and Avalanche Energy, as well as Kyoto Fusioneering, which has an office in Seattle.

Here’s a closer look at the four companies based in this region:

Avalanche Energy, Seattle

• Notable fact: Avalanche is unusual for its small-scale approach to fusion, and its plan to launch a pilot plant by 2030 is among the earlier targets in the race.
• Year founded: 2018
• Target uses: Electricity, space propulsion, marine propulsion, off-grid energy
• Publicly shared total funding: $104.2 million
• Target for scientific break even: 2029
• Target for first pilot plant: 2030

General Fusion, Vancouver, B.C.

• Notable fact: General Fusion has made multiple pivots in recent years in its path to commercialization and was the first to go public.
• Year founded: 2002
• Target uses: Electricity generation
• Publicly shared total funding: about $500 million
• Target for scientific break even: Not disclosed; aiming to produce fusion conditions by 2028
• Target for first pilot plant: Approximately 2035

Helion, Everett, Wash.

• Notable fact: Helion was the first to sign up a fusion customer when it inked a deal with Microsoft in 2023, and aims to be the first to reach commercialization.
• Year founded: 2013
• Target uses: Electricity generation
• Publicly shared total funding: $1.5 billion
• Target for scientific break even: Not disclosed
• Target for first pilot plant: 2028

Zap Energy, Everett, Wash.

• Notable fact: Zap recently announced it will also pursue nuclear fission energy, building small-scale reactors alongside its fusion work.
• Year founded: 2017
• Target uses: Electricity generation, off-grid energy, industrial heat
• Publicly shared total funding: $338 million
• Target for scientific break even: Not disclosed
• Target for first pilot plant: Late 2030s

AI data centers face mounting community backlash and local moratoriums, while surging power demands knock tech giants off course from their climate ambitions. Could fusion be the solution to both problems, and could two Seattle-area companies provide the fix?

Helion Energy is betting on it. The company signed an unprecedented agreement to sell fusion energy to Microsoft for a Central Washington data center. Armed with a $1.5 billion war chest, Helion is sprinting to reach its 2028 deadline to flip the switch on that power plant, which it hopes will be the world’s first to commercially produce electricity from fusion.

The soaring demand for clean energy is driving interest and investment, said David Kirtley, Helion’s CEO and co-founder. “It’s enabled us to ramp up our timelines and go faster than we had originally planned.”

Nearby, competitor Zap Energy has raised $330 million and secured Department of Energy backing. While ambitious, the startup is taking a more cautious approach. Zap recently announced it will jointly pursue fusion’s conventional cousin — nuclear fission — as a near-term revenue source and a hedge on its fusion bet.

“This isn’t a pivot,” said Benj Conway, Zap’s president and co-founder. “By integrating them into a single platform, we can move faster, reduce risk and build a more enduring company.”

Helion and Zap belong to a global cohort of entrepreneurs trying to harness the power of the sun. Their goal is to create a “star in a jar” here on Earth to produce nearly limitless clean energy. For decades, researchers have chased this milestone — and some believe the industry is finally getting close.

Inside Helion’s sprint to 2028

A visit to Helion starts with a gauntlet of security hurdles: getting past an outdoor guard in a booth, ID checks and stowing phones in locked cubbies. Inside its R&D space in Everett, Wash., Helion operates Polaris, a 60-foot-long, seventh-generation prototype that uses magnets to compress plasma, the super-hot state of matter required for fusion. Here is how it works:

• The Collision: The machine creates magnetic fields at both ends that launch and squeeze tiny blobs of plasma containing light atoms toward the center, where they collide at 1 million miles per hour.
• The Capture: As the ions fuse and release energy, the plasma expands against the magnetic field. This movement creates an electric current captured directly as electricity, similar to regenerative braking in electric vehicles.

The commercial device will ultimately run on isotopes of hydrogen and helium, and aims to reach temperatures of 200 million degrees Celsius — more than 10-times hotter than the center of the sun.

But significant technical hurdles remain. In July 2025, Helion broke ground on its 50-megawatt plant, Orion, in Malaga, Wash. The facility must be operational in two years to meet its contract with Microsoft.

Helion’s approach has been to build larger and larger prototypes as it advances its technology, but the company took a detour this spring to build a fusion device about one-eighth the size of Polaris.

“This is where we’re building the next smaller machine, Tiny Merge,” said Manav Singh, Helion’s director of electrical engineering, on a recent tour. “Step in, right here.”

Behind a massive Wizard of Oz-worthy curtain was the downsized, tubular fusion device. It bristled with metal protuberances that will connect it to power sources to send surges of electricity into the machine.

Tiny Merge could be viewed as a worrisome sign of backtracking to resolve technical issues. However, the company maintains its strategy always left room for smaller devices to allow for faster testing and iterations.

“There’s a few much more deep investigations we want to do,” Singh said. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking.

Zap’s dual core bet

A four-minute drive from Helion sits rival Zap Energy. The startup is building its technology on a physics phenomenon known as the Z-pinch, which uses a powerful electrical current to generate its own magnetic field to confine plasma.

Zap’s system operates through a distinct process:

• Plasma Generation: Hydrogen gas is injected into the device and blasted with energy, creating a 2-foot-long strand of plasma resembling a tame lightning bolt.
• Heat Absorption: When the Z-pinch triggers fusion, released neutrons are captured by a surrounding liquid metal blanket (bismuth in testing, lithium for commercial use).
• Power Generation: The neutrons carry intense heat, which is then converted into usable energy.

Zap is running three fusion devices that measure about 12 feet long, each focused on fine-tuning a specific challenge in its system.

Despite hitting key milestones, concerns about the timeline for reaching commercially-ready fusion triggered Zap’s move to add fission to its plans, making it the first fusion company to do so.

Zap is now working to deploy a 10-megawatt fission microreactor based on legacy Toshiba designs, giving it a more certain path to an operational power plant than fusion currently offers.

The company says the two strategies share technologies that could accelerate the development of both. A key technical overlap is the use of liquid metals; the fission device is cooled by liquid sodium, which behaves similarly to the liquid bismuth and lithium used in its fusion design.

“Fission gives us a path to deploy. Fusion gives us a path to transform,” Zap CEO Zabrina Johal, said in April. “Bringing them together is how we do both.”

A global clean energy race

More than 50 companies globally are pursuing fusion power, including two additional Pacific Northwest ventures: Seattle-based Avalanche Energy and British Columbia’s General Fusion.

Among the heavily funded contenders is Massachusetts-based Commonwealth Fusion Systems. Armed with nearly $3 billion, the company plans to build a plant in Virginia, home to the nation’s largest data center hub. China remains another major wildcard, investing billions of undisclosed dollars into its own domestic fusion ventures.

As work continues, enthusiasm grows alongside persistent skepticism. Some experts doubt cost-competitive fusion can ever be achieved, while others believe commercial viability is still decades away — too late to solve the immediate energy needs of the AI boom.

Laura Berzak Hopkins, deputy chief research officer at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, remains cautiously optimistic about the sector’s trajectory.

“We’ve made incredible progress, and we are reaching ever closer, but there still remain these major scientific and technological hurdles,” Berzak Hopkins said. However, she added, “new capabilities and new knowledge really bring us to this exciting cusp.”

Whether Helion and its peers will prove the skeptics wrong remains to be seen, but the data center energy crisis ensures the world will be watching.

Sources and references

Podcast interviews:

• David Kirtley, Helion Energy, CEO and co-founder
• Manav Singh, Helion Energy, director of electrical engineering 
• Matthew Thompson, Zap Energy, senior vice president of fission technology and former vice president of systems engineering and pulsed power
• Laura Berzak Hopkins, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, associate laboratory director for Strategy and Partnerships, and deputy chief research officer

GeekWire’s related coverage:

• Helion gives behind-the-scenes tour of secretive 60-foot fusion prototype as it races to deployment
• Helion makes big bet on ‘Tiny Merge’ fusion testbed to meet aggressive Microsoft timeline
• Inside Zap: Fusion pioneer tries to build ‘a star in a jar’ to unlock abundant clean energy
• Zap Energy’s nuclear double play: Fusion startup adds traditional fission to its lineup, in industry first