On Friday 5th November, private fusion company Helion announced the largest private fusion fundraise so far. They have secured $500m to deliver a fusion demonstrator, and there’s additional commitments of $1.7bn going forward tied to specific milestones. 

This is an amazing announcement because the amounts invested and committed long-term will give Helion certainty in their planning. 

 The announcement also has wider implications. Arguably the biggest factor holding back commercial development of fusion energy is funding, so the fact that private investment is increasing to these kinds of levels is extremely positive, and hopefully it will encourage other such commitments.

It’s important that the fusion field receives more funding in general into varied approaches. We need to be investigating different technologies for fusion energy because we need to be developing solutions at different scales for different applications. 

Helion has a good idea to bypass steam turbine systems and generate electricity more efficiently. But we also need to remember that many industrial processes rely on heat, which also needs to be decarbonised, so we are going to need a range of devices, outputs and scales. 

Read more about the Helion raise and technical approach in these articles:

Financial Times - Record fundraising by a nuclear fusion start-up

TechCrunch – Helion secures $2.2B to commercialize fusion energy

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