Tiny Merge
Under Construction
Helion Energy
Overview
Smaller, agile FRC fusion testbed roughly one-eighth the size of Polaris (~8 feet long) used to iterate on plasma formation and ring-merging experiments far faster than the larger machines. Helion sees Tiny Merge as a key learning loop to de-risk Orion ahead of the 2028 Microsoft delivery deadline.
Helion completed the first vacuum pump-down on Tiny Merge at its Everett campus on August 28, 2026, reaching 1x10-6 torr in under an hour. Remaining hardware is still being installed, with the testbed targeted to come online by the end of summer 2026 so the team has roughly two years to feed its findings into final Orion designs.