Monday, August 31, 2026
Helion completes first Tiny Merge vacuum pump-down
Helion said on August 28, 2026 that it completed the first vacuum pump-down on Tiny Merge, its subscale field-reversed-configuration fusion testbed at the Everett, Washington campus, reaching a target base pressure of 1x10-6 torr in under an hour. The company said the result confirms the machine can hold high vacuum before remaining hardware is installed. Tiny Merge is roughly one-eighth the size of the Polaris prototype and is meant to iterate on plasma formation and merging faster ahead of Helion's 2028 Microsoft power-delivery deadline for the Orion plant.
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