Artificial intelligence (AI) group OpenAI is reportedly discussing purchasing electricity from Everett, Washington-based startup Helion Energy. Sources said FORCE that a deal would allow OpenAI to secure some of Helion’s power generation, with up to 5 GW available by 2030 and up to 50 GW by 2035. Helion announced in February that its Polaris prototype has set new industry benchmarks, becoming the first privately developed fusion energy machine to demonstrate measurable deuterium-tritium (DT) fusion and reach plasma temperatures of 150 million degrees Celsius. At the time, the company said the milestones “mark significant advances in Helion’s vision of making commercially viable fusion energy a reality and are a first for the private fusion industry.” “What makes this deal significant is that it reframes AI as an energy-intensive industrial system rather than simply a software platform,” said Siddardha Vangala, senior AI platforms engineer and enterprise AI systems architect at MasTec Advanced Technologies. Vangala said FORCE“As large-scale AI models grow, demand for data centers is increasing rapidly and companies are starting to secure dedicated power sources years in advance. If fusion technology becomes commercially viable, partnerships like this could define the long-term infrastructure strategy of the AI industry.” Microsoft said in 2023 that it had signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) with Helion to buy electricity from the company starting in 2028 in what was considered the first PPA linked to fusion energy.
POWER is at the forefront of fusion energy research and development coverage. That includes a recent special report featuring several of the industry’s leading companies. Read “Research Pays Off in Search for Clean Energy ‘Holy Grail'” and find more content in our archives.
(caption id=”attachment_250637″ align=”alignnone” width=”640″)
Polaris is Helion Energy’s seventh-generation nuclear fusion prototype, designed to demonstrate the feasibility of generating net electricity from fusion. The machine is a field inverted configuration (FRC) plasma generator, reaching high temperatures and focusing on a smaller, pulsed, non-thermal approach to achieving commercial power generation. Courtesy: Helion Energy(/caption)
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, is an investor in Helion, which was founded in 2013. Altman’s stake in the company has not been disclosed, although it has been called “considerable.” Other investors in Helion include Softbank, Mithril Capital (led by entrepreneur and PayPal founder Peter Thiel) and Meta, including Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. Altman led Helion’s $500 million Series E funding round in 2021. The company also closed a $425 million funding round in January last year. Altman said Monday that he has resigned from the board of directors of Helion Energy, although he remains on the board of OpenAI. Altman said holding both positions was untenable. Altman in a post on the social media platform Altman, at the time of the deal with Microsoft in 2023, said: “My vision of the future… is that if we can greatly reduce cost intelligence and the cost of energy, the quality of life for all of us will increase incredibly. If we can make AI systems more and more powerful for less and less money (the same thing we are trying to do with energy at Helion), I consider these two projects to be very spiritually aligned.” Other technology companies have also signed agreements to secure energy from the fusion. In 2025, Google signed agreements with Massachusetts-based Commonwealth Fusion Systems.