Investing in a technology that does not yet exist, and which is even at a very experimental stage, this is the daring bet that Microsoft has just made. The US tech giant has signed an electricity supply contract for 2028 with the start-up Helion, specializing in nuclear fusion, the latter announced last Wednesday. According to experts interviewed by the American press, this is the first trade agreement of its kind to be concluded.
It must be said that nuclear fusion is a technology that is still far from being mastered. Unlike nuclear fission, used in current nuclear power plants and which consists of breaking a heavy atom to form two light atoms, nuclear fusion aims to bring together two light atoms, heating them to extreme temperatures (above 100 million degrees Celsius), to form a larger one. This is to imitate the way the Sun produces energy. This revolutionary technology has the advantage of being potentially abundant and not producing sustainable radioactive waste.
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Too ambitious a timetable?
Founded in 2013, Helion plans to commission its first fusion power plant by 2028, with the goal of producing at least 50 megawatts (MW) of electricity within one year. "We still have a lot of work to do, but we are confident in our ability to deliver the world's first fusion plant," CEO David Kirtley said in a statement. On Microsoft's side, it is emphasized that the company's work "supports our own long-term clean energy goals and will advance the market to establish a new, efficient method to bring more clean energy to the grid, faster," says its president Brad Smith.
However, some experts consider Helion's schedule too ambitious, not imagining this technology to give its first results for at least a decade. Few details were provided about the contract signed between the two companies. The boss of Helion specifies only that his company will have to pay penalties if it does not deliver electricity to Microsoft on time.
It should be noted that Microsoft and Helion have a close relationship, through Sam Altman. The CEO and co-founder of OpenAI – behind the ChatGPT phenomenon – a company linked to Microsoft through a multi-billion dollar partnership, is also the main investor in Helion. It has invested $375 million in 2021. While Altman told CNBC that he had advocated for the two companies to work together, the agreement is the result of Helion's work independently, he said. "It wasn't my doing," he told the US media.
