Helion's $175 Million CHIPS Deal Is a Letter of Intent That Gives Commerce an Equity Stake

Helion has signed a letter of intent for up to $175 million from the Department of Commerce's CHIPS Research and Development Office, and Commerce would take a $175 million non-voting stake in the fusion company in return, according to Helion's own announcement dated Oct. 22, 2026.

That is not how every headline has framed it. TechCrunch's Tim De Chant wrote on Oct. 22 that Helion "received" $175 million in federal funding. Helion's release says the opposite: the award is not final until a later definitive award agreement is signed.

What the letter of intent says

Helion's release says the federal money comes with $50 million in private investment, for $225 million in total. On signing a definitive agreement, Commerce would receive a $175 million non-voting interest in Helion, valued at its most recent Series G preferred stock price. The page describes the stake as payment for the award.

Item	Amount	Where
Federal award (letter of intent)	Up to $175 million	CHIPS R&D Office
Private investment	$50 million	Helion
Washington R&D and packaging	More than $100 million	Everett
Vermont R&D with an industry partner	About $80 million	Burlington

The Everett work would create more than 100 jobs and build power-module manufacturing capability, per Helion. TechCrunch identifies the Vermont partner as GlobalFoundries.

The 5% to 10% loss behind the pitch

The technical case rests on one figure. De Chant reports that existing devices lose about 5% to 10% of the electricity flowing through them. David Kirtley, Helion's co-founder and chief executive, told TechCrunch: "If we can cut that loss in half, that's actually twice the power output of the fusion system."

The arithmetic only works if the loss is counted against the net output of a pulsed machine that switches and recovers large amounts of energy on every cycle. Helion's release describes its systems that way and says the chips are meant to improve efficiency, operating lifetime and cooling. It gives no voltage, current or device count, and neither does TechCrunch.

Helion also says these chips are available only from overseas makers. Kirtley told TechCrunch: "There are no U.S. manufacturers right now that do it."

Orion will not get these chips

Kirtley said the funded work will not reach Orion, the plant Helion is racing to finish to meet a 2028 deadline to supply Microsoft with grid electricity, because federal contracts take months to negotiate. The research is meant for later plants.

That separates the headline claim from the schedule. A doubling of output is a property of a future design, not of the 2028 plant. Bill Frauenhofer, who leads semiconductor investment and innovation at Commerce, said the award will help "convert and deliver power to critical applications in defense, grid transmission, and advanced energy generation."

Helion's own page cites a Series G of $500 million in its body and $465 million in a related headline, so the valuation behind the stake cannot be checked from the release alone. The Terminal has not seen the definitive agreement.

Power constraints now shape other hardware coverage here, from per-request grid carbon to Tesla's capital plans for Optimus.

The date that decides whether this is an award or an announcement is the signing of the definitive agreement. Helion has not given one.