• Helion Energy wants to produce large amounts of electricity through fusion by 2028.

• Microsoft has agreed to buy 50 megawatts of electricity from Helion, which can power 40,000 homes.

• Helion's chief business officer talked to Insider about how the company plans to make fusion energy.

The race is on for clean energy company Helion Energy to build a fusion power plant capable of producing enough electricity for tech behemoth Microsoft in five years.

Microsoft in May agreed to buy 50 megawatts of electricity from Helion by 2028, which is enough to power around 40,000 homes.

Even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is enthusiastic for the potential of fusion energy and Helion, previously saying he's "super excited about what's going to happen there." Altman invested $375 million into the company in November 2021, leading its Series E round.

Fusion energy could be used to power data centers, which are large consumers of electricity, Scott Krisiloff, Helion Energy's chief business officer, told Insider.

But despite the enthusiasm and promises of fusion energy, it's incredibly hard to produce. In particular, it's difficult to get up to the temperature needed to produce electricity from fusion. Helion claims its the first private fusion company to have built technology capable of reaching that temperature.

"As our population has grown and required more information, and more connectedness to the internet, the energy needs of our population grow as well," Krisiloff said.

Krisiloff said Helion is currently working on its seventh prototype, Polaris, that is expected to be completed in 2024, and would be the first to produce electricity from fusion.

"Fusion is something that we utilize every day; all of our energy traces back to fusion in some way," Krisiloff said. "But we've never been able to harness it on Earth in a way that we can produce electricity from it."

Fusion energy is created in a 40-foot long tube

Fusion happens when two atoms come together, forming a single atom, and is is how the sun and stars make energy.