From TechCrunch, January 28:
Few fusion startups have been as closely watched as Helion. The 12-year-old company is backed by Sam Altman, rumored to be in talks with OpenAI, and has a deal to supply Microsoft with electricity by 2028 — years earlier than its competitors.
The company’s unorthodox approach to fusion power and relative secrecy has earned it plenty of fans — and critics. But don’t count its investors among the naysayers.
Helion announced Tuesday a $425 million Series F raise that pushed its valuation $5.245 billion. The startup also flipped the switch last month on its latest prototype, Polaris, which it anticipates will be the first fusion reactor to generate electricity.
Polaris, Helion’s seventh prototype, sits inside a 27,000 square-foot building in Everett, Washington. It took more than three years to build, which is quick by fusion industry standards. But to hit its ambitious 2028 deadline for Microsoft, the startup will have to move even faster on its commercial-scale power plant.
The difficulties Helion faces are in many ways similar to those in other leading-edge industries.
“In AI, what’s the big challenge? Getting the chips. In fusion, what’s the big challenge? Getting the chips,” CEO David Kirtley told TechCrunch in a recent interview. “Polaris is 50,000 of these large-scale, pulse-power semiconductors, and getting those set the timeline.”
The solutions it’s seeking are similar, too. The new investment will go toward bringing a significant amount of specialized manufacturing in-house. For example, the company had to order a type of short-term energy storage device known as capacitors three years in advance.
“Our goal is to go from waiting three years for a supplier to give us capacitors to us making our own capacitors but faster, so now we can make them in a year or less,” he said....
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Meanwhile, further west (Reuters via Asia Financial, Jan. 28)
China Building Huge Laser Fusion Research Facility, Analysts Say
Satellite photos show China appears to be building a large laser-ignited fusion research centre in a southwestern city
China looks to be building a large laser-ignited fusion research centre in the southwestern city of Mianyang, experts at two US analytical organisations say.
They said the development that could aid nuclear weapons design and work exploring power generation.
Satellite photos – such as the one below – show four outlying “arms” that will house laser bays, and a central experiment bay that will hold a target chamber containing hydrogen isotopes the powerful lasers will fuse together, producing energy, Decker Eveleth, a researcher at US-based independent research organisation CNA Corp, said....
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Recently (Jan. 23) on China's efforts:
