Report: Helion is working on a massive fusion power deal with OpenAI

The Seattle-area fusion company Helion Energy is negotiating a deal to supply OpenAI with massive amounts of energy, Axios reported Monday.

The deal under discussion would have OpenAI receiving an eye-popping 5 gigawatts of power by 2030, ramping up to 50 gigawatts by 2035, according to Axios, which cited an unnamed source familiar with the talks. By comparison, Washington state’s Grand Coulee Dam — America’s largest hydroelectric facility — has a 6.8 gigawatt capacity.

Helion has yet to demonstrate that its electricity-generating technology is commercially viable. The company is currently operating its seventh-generation prototype in Everett, Wash., and has raised more than $1 billion from investors — including Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.

Helion told GeekWire that Altman is stepping down from its board of directors after more than a decade.

“This decision enables Helion and OpenAI to partner on future opportunities to bring zero-carbon, safe electricity to the world,” said Helion CEO David Kirtley via email.

The company did not confirm the reported discussions with OpenAI, saying it “has not announced any new customer agreements” beyond deals with Microsoft and the steel manufacturer Nucor.

Altman led Helion’s $500 million funding round in 2021, personally investing $375 million, and also participated in the company’s $425 million round in January 2025.

“Sam has played an integral role in Helion’s development, helping us focus on the thing that matters most: deploying fusion for customers as quickly as possible to fully satisfy the world’s need for clean and abundant energy,” Kirtley added. “We look forward to continuing to work with him in this new capacity.”

Helion recently climbed to the No. 1 spot on the GeekWire 200, our list of the top privately held startups in the Pacific Northwest.

The company is building its first commercial facility — a 50-megawatt plant called Orion — in Malaga, Wash. The plant is expected to begin smashing atoms by 2028 and Microsoft has agreed to purchase its energy if the project succeeds.

The reported 5-gigawatt target for the OpenAI deal would be 100 times larger than that first plant.

Dozens of fusion companies worldwide are racing to replicate the nuclear reactions that power the sun and stars, with the goal of producing nearly limitless, carbon-free energy. None have yet achieved viable fusion power, though many are making incremental advances and signing agreements for full-scale facilities.

Skeptics argue that commercial fusion remains many years away, but growing demand for clean energy to power data centers and an increasingly electrified economy is stoking interest and funding for fusion.

As Helion develops its fusion technology, it’s also building a 166,000-square-foot manufacturing facility. The site will assemble the thousands of capacitors needed to deliver massive electrical surges to its fusion generator and capture the power it produces.

Production is expected to begin at the facility later this year. It will help supply the roughly 2,500 capacitor units needed for the Orion plant, but is designed with broader scaling in mind.

“These high volume lines are not for our Orion machine, but for the next machine,” Sofia Gizzi, Helion’s director of production, told GeekWire in October. “A factory operating at 50% of its design capacity or less can spit out Orion, no problem. But we’re really looking beyond that into 2030.”

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Editor’s note: Story updated at 9:50 a.m. with comments from Helion.