Helion Energy, the Everett, Wash., startup racing to build the world’s first fusion plant, is expanding its semiconductor development and manufacturing efforts. The company today announced a letter of intent with the U.S. Department of Commerce for up to $175 million in funding for a three-year program to support R&D tied to semiconductor technology for commercial fusion energy.

The funds are available through the CHIPS Research and Development Office. Under the deal, which remains to be finalized, Commerce would receive a $175 million non-voting equity interest in Helion.

Helion is also putting $50 million of private investment toward the semiconductor effort.

The semiconductor initiative has two focal areas:

• More than $100 million will support R&D and manufacturing in Everett, focused on next-generation, high-voltage semiconductors and advanced packaging, which integrates multiple semiconductor devices into modules for use in its systems.
• About $80 million will support R&D for next-generation semiconductor development in partnership with GlobalFoundries, a chip manufacturer with operations in Vermont, New York and overseas.

Helion is working to build a power plant that produces energy from fusion — smashing together small atoms in reactions akin to those that create the sun’s energy. Dozens of companies globally are chasing fusion, but none so far have shown that their technology can make more energy than is required to produce fusion in the first place.

Helion’s system uses powerful electrical pulses to form and compress plasma — an electrically charged gas — to create fusion conditions. As the plasma expands against the machine’s magnetic field, it induces an electrical current in surrounding coils. The system is designed to recover electricity directly rather than using heat to drive a steam turbine.

High-voltage semiconductors — which are designed to control electricity at high voltages without breaking down — play an essential role in the system and need to operate at optimal efficiency to capture as much energy from the system as possible.

“The CHIPS Act goal, but also specifically our component in it, builds out the high-voltage semiconductor supply chain here in the United States, both on the R&D as well as the manufacturing,” said David Kirtley, Helion’s CEO, in a GeekWire interview.

The work in Everett is expected to create more than 100 jobs. Helion’s workforce already includes a small team of semiconductor experts, and the company will be hiring for roles including materials scientists, semiconductor engineers, technicians and assemblers.

“This investment expands domestic research, secures critical supply chains, and creates high-paying American jobs,” Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said in a statement.

Congress passed the CHIPS and Science Act with leadership from Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell, and President Joe Biden signed it into law in August 2022. The law included $52.7 billion for semiconductor manufacturing, research and related activities.

Helion has raised more than $1.5 billion from investors. The $50 million for semiconductor work includes private funds already committed to the company and new cash; Kirtley did not specify how much additional funding it’s receiving, but said it includes new investors.

Helion’s expansion into semiconductor work comes as it continues fine-tuning its fusion technology at its Everett facility. At the same time, Helion is building Orion, its commercial-scale fusion plant in Malaga, Wash., near the Columbia River. It has an agreement to supply Microsoft with electricity from the facility and is targeting initial operations in 2028.

“So that’s still the plan,” Kirtley said. “We’re building Orion components and operating our other systems internally, and the work continues in parallel with all of this.”

The company has semiconductors available for use in Orion, primarily sourced from overseas vendors, he said. Kirtley expects some chips developed through the initiative to be used in Orion, potentially late in its construction.

The semiconductor effort adds another development track as Helion pursues the daunting goal of commercializing fusion energy.

“As soon as the award kicks off, we can build out the manufacturing capacity and the testing capacity, and in a parallel, do the research and development into the next generation of semiconductors as well,” Kirtley said.

We know [The Action Lab] always has something hands-on. This time, the video shows a toroidal plasma demo and how it relates to nuclear fusion. Plasma has a high temperature, and if you use physical electrodes to excite the plasma, this high temperature tends to destroy the electrodes. But thanks to the relationship between electricity and magnetism, you can create plasma with an alternating magnetic field instead of physical electrodes.

The actual practical device is a 10 MHz source with a coil and a low-pressure globe full of xenon gas. It looks pretty cool. Of course, the little tabletop demo isn’t strong enough to drive a fusion reaction. But if you scale it up and make some modifications, including using hydrogen, you get a tokamak reactor.

The problem, of course, is that current reactors need more energy to operate than they produce. But we keep hearing that nuclear fusion is right around the corner. One day, that’ll probably be true.

Of course, you can build your own fusion device. Just don’t expect to generate net power.

Replicating the power of the sun to generate clean energy is hard enough, but Helion Energy just achieved another rare feat: making it onto the iconic “Jeopardy!” clue board.

During Tuesday evening’s episode, the $800 clue was featured in a category titled “Y Combinator” and read: “Helion says it’ll build the 1st power plant using this process, fission’s opposite with no uncontrolled chain reactions.”

Three-day champion Greg Monson, a videographer from Portland, Ore., buzzed in first with the correct response: “What is fusion?”

The shoutout didn’t go unnoticed in Everett, Wash., where Helion is based. CEO David Kirtley shared a video of the moment on LinkedIn, writing that it was “surreal to see Helion featured on Jeopardy! last night. And in great company with Y Combinator!”

Kirtley added, “Clean, safe, reliable power is getting a little more mainstream.”

Helion is a Y Combinator alum, having gone through the famed Silicon Valley accelerator’s Summer 2014 batch. Other correct responses in the category included Airbnb, The Athletic, Coinbase, and Twitch.

The game-show spotlight comes as Helion races to master fusion, which produces energy by smashing together light atoms. No one has been able to create a commercially viable amount of energy from fusion here on Earth, though notable progress is being made by research institutions and private companies.

Helion has generated plenty of momentum of its own in the process. In June, the startup announced $465 million in new funding, bringing its total capital raised to more than $1.5 billion and its valuation to 10 times that figure.

The company also recently expanded into a new 15,000-square-foot office in downtown Seattle and pushed its total headcount past 800 employees. Helion currently holds the No. 2 spot on the GeekWire 200 ranking of top Pacific Northwest startups.

Helion Energy on Tuesday said that it added $35 million to a funding round initially announced in June. The Everett, Wash.-based fusion company originally shared news of a $465 million Series G round.

“After initially closing the round earlier this summer, we are excited to bring on several new investors and to have a round that includes crossover, pension, and sovereign wealth investors,” said David Kirtley, Helion’s co-founder and CEO, in a post on LinkedIn. Kirtley said the investment now totals $500 million.

The company aims to be the first in the world to commercialize fusion, replicating the reactions that power the sun and stars to produce nearly limitless clean energy. It has raised more than $1.5 billion to date.

Last week Helion celebrated the opening of its first office in downtown Seattle as its headcount tops 800 employees.

The company is racing to hit an ambitious timeline, having signed a deal with Microsoft three years ago to supply energy to a Central Washington data center by 2028. The company broke ground on the 50-megawatt plant, dubbed Orion, in July 2025.

But Helion’s timing for hitting that energy target remains uncertain. When it announced the agreement with Microsoft, the company stated that Orion was “expected to be online by 2028 and will target power generation of 50 MW or greater after a 1-year ramp up period.”

Axios recently reported that full capacity might not be hit until 2030, according to a Helion executive. The news site also cited two scientific publications by plasma physicists questioning the company’s ability to produce a sufficient amount of energy from its fusion devices to power the grid, though Helion has responded to concerns raised by both on its FAQ site.

That said, Helion is hustling to resolve technical challenges. GeekWire in May reported on Tiny Merge, a small-scale testbed device the company is building at its R&D facility to answer questions its larger, more expensive prototypes haven’t — questions that need answers before final power plant designs are locked in.

Kirtley, however, remains bullish on the company’s trajectory and the vote of support from investors.

“Technical milestones remain the most important to me and the company,” he said, “but this new funding demonstrates the growing demand for, and confidence in, fusion energy and Helion’s ability to deliver fusion energy to the grid.”

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