Helion

Helion Energy, Inc. is an American fusion research company located in Everett, Washington.[2] It is developing a magneto-inertial fusion technology to produce nuclear fusion power by combining deuterium with helium-3 via aneutronic fusion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helion_Energy

• The company was founded in 2013 by David Kirtley, John Slough, Chris Pihl, and George Votroubek.[5] In 2013, Helion was selected as a finalist in the Clean Tech Open, a nonprofit accelerator program supporting early-stage clean technology companies. The recognition highlighted the company's early work in magneto-inertial fusion and its potential applications for commercial electricity generation.[6] In 2015, Helion participated in the Y Combinator startup accelerator as part of its Summer 2013 (S14) batch.
• The Linus program was successful to a point, but as the scale of the compression ramped up the system began to face the problem that the collapsing metal would squeeze the plasma out of the ends of the cylinder more rapidly than expected, too rapidly to complete the compression. Looking for solutions to this problem, they began to adapt the recently discovered field-reversed configuration (FRC), which causes the plasma to form into a self-stable form. By injecting the plasma in FRC, it would not squirt out the ends. Interest in mechanical compression waned as the researchers turned to studying FRCs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magneto-inertial_fusion

Retired Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory researcher Daniel Jassby mentioned Helion Energy in a letter included in the American Physical Society newsletter Physics & Society (April 2019) as being among fusion start-ups allegedly practicing "voodoo fusion" rather than legitimate science. He noted that the company is one of several that has continually claimed "power in 5 to 10 years, but almost all have apparently never produced a single D–D fusion reaction" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helion_Energy#Criticism

• Feb13'2026: Fusion research company Helion Energy said its Polaris prototype has set new industry benchmarks, becoming the first privately developed fusion energy machine to demonstrate measurable deuterium-tritium (DT) fusion and achieve plasma temperatures of 150 million degrees Celsius.
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  • May'2026: “Fundamental to our technology is direct electricity recovery,” Kirtley says. “If you can recover the electricity at 95 percent efficiency, fusion has to do only that [last] little bit.” Carter agrees that this aspect is Helion’s clearest technical edge—if it works. “That’s a real advantage for Helion,” he says, which “does lower the bar, if they can do that, on how much gain they need." That “if” is the whole story..... Helion’s history, like that of many fusion projects, includes a string of missed deadlines. The company once projected net electricity from an earlier machine by 2024. As the Microsoft date looms, no published results have confirmed net power generation from Polaris. The sharpest criticism comes from Slough, whose FRC research helped to give rise to Helion. He has since split with the company, and his objection goes to the heart of the design.*