Helion Lands $175 Million Federal Award to Build Fusion-Grade Semiconductors

Fusion startup Helion has won $175 million in federal funding to develop and manufacture advanced semiconductors for its fusion power plants, the company announced Thursday. The three-year award comes from the Department of Commerce under the CHIPS Act. Cutting the losses in half matters more than it sounds.

Today's power electronics lose about 5% to 10% of the electricity flowing through them. In a complex system like Helion's, those losses compound. CEO David Kirtley put the stakes plainly: "If we can cut that loss in half, that's actually twice the power output of the fusion system."

What does the money actually fund?

The award will help Helion build automated semiconductor module, packaging, and testing capacity to supply the fusion machine now under construction. More than $100 million goes to semiconductor and advanced packaging R&D in Washington State, Kirtley told TechCrunch. Roughly $80 million supports R&D in Vermont on advanced semiconductor tooling, design, and process development with GlobalFoundries.

Separately, GlobalFoundries has already received more than $80 million from the federal government to advance manufacturing of gallium-nitride semiconductors, a type widely used in power electronics.

The new production line, to be built in Washington State, will be the first in the U.S. to make a class of semiconductor used not just in fusion power but in manufacturing, wastewater treatment, medicine, and defense. "There are no U.S. manufacturers right now that do it," Kirtley said. "This is absolutely enabling going from zero to 100 for advanced, high-voltage and pulsed semiconductors here in the United States."

Alongside the federal award, Helion announced a fresh $50 million private investment, without naming the investor. In total, the company has raised more than $3.2 billion, making it the second-best-funded fusion startup.

Will it help the Microsoft deadline?

Not directly. Helion is racing to finish its first power plant, Orion, in time to meet a 2028 deadline to supply Microsoft with electricity from the grid. Kirtley acknowledged that the award-funded R&D won't make it into Orion in time for launch — federal contracts can take months to negotiate. But he said the work promises to improve the efficiency of subsequent Helion power plants, sharpening their competitiveness in cutthroat electricity markets.

Why efficiency is everything

Helion's approach to fusion harvests electricity directly from fusion reactions instead of using them to heat steam and spin a turbine. The startup is developing a reactor known as a field-reversed configuration:

• Fusion fuel is injected into both ends of an hourglass-like chamber and heated into a plasma.
• Magnetic fields accelerate the plasmas toward each other.
• On collision, another magnetic field compresses the plasma ball, pushing temperatures above 100 million degrees C.
• At those temperatures and pressures, fuel atoms fuse and release energy, pushing the plasma outward against the magnetic field.
• The magnets and capacitors capture that energy and convert it into electricity — much like a hybrid or EV recharges its battery by using electric motors to slow the car.

Helion says this direct energy conversion will help future reactors produce more power than they consume, the milestone any fusion plant must hit to be commercially viable. Efficient power electronics are central to that math.

"One of the enabling parts of our technology that allows us to do this direct electricity recovery — putting electricity into fusion and at a very high efficiency, recovering it at high speed — is the modern semiconductor," Kirtley said. "We're going to take that to the next level here, increase the efficiency."

Who else benefits?

Electric vehicles represent the broadest current use for advanced power electronics. Consumer electronics could gain too, though their size and power demands run far below Helion's.

Defense is a likely second-order beneficiary. Energy weapons have drawn fresh interest as drones swarm battlefields and overwhelm existing air defense systems. Bill Frauenhofer, who leads semiconductor investment and innovation at the Department of Commerce, said in a press release that the award will help "convert and deliver power to critical applications in defense, grid transmission, and advanced energy generation."

Despite the potential for defense contracts, Kirtley keeps the mission fixed on the grid. "Domestic energy supply, national security through energy dominance and energy security — that's our main focus," he said. The bet now is that U.S.-made pulsed semiconductors, scaled from zero, will make Helion's second and third plants cheap enough to compete.