If they are really only 5 years from producing sellable power they are already capable of a science demo that would render this sort of vapid publicity stunt pointless. I’ve set a reminder to check back in 5 years, if the cynicism was genuinely needless I’ll apologize.
I suggest you do a deep dive into the physics behind their design. It's quite clever. They are able to evade some of the practical showstopping issues that face most other fusion approaches.
This announcement has nothing to do with physics. As stated, it's just an agreement for Microsoft to buy electricity, and not obviously an agreement to do so at any particular price. And why make this move now? Is Helion afraid that no one would buy their electricity? It's literally the most fungible commodity ever and we're heading into an era of unprecedented demand for charging EVs. Anyone offering reliable, environmentally friendly in 2028 will have no problem selling all they can produce. And why pick a specific customer at all? That's a weird way to sell bulk electricity, which is distributed by grids that cover millions of consumers. I could see Microsoft needing to make such an agreement before Constellation might be willing to finance new transmission from the grid to a remote Azure data center, but nothing in this announcement suggests that's the case. The only plausible explanation for this move is financial--Helion is going to leverage Microsoft's name to lure investment--and/or some sort of carbon credit/greenwashing play by Constellation & Microsoft.
