When Google DeepMind recently announced it would partner with a fusion-energy startup, most headlines focused on AI’s role in simulating plasma physics. But beneath the hype lies a deeper truth: the world’s largest data and AI companies — including Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI — are racing to secure access to the only form of clean, limitless power that could sustain the exponential growth of AI.
From DeepMind’s collaboration with fusion startups to investments by SoftBank, Bill Gates, and Sam Altman, the same players driving AI advancement are quietly positioning themselves around fusion energy. Microsoft has inked fusion power agreements. Google has provided AI tools to optimize plasma containment. OpenAI’s CEO has backed Helion Energy. SoftBank – with their global AI datacenter initiatives – is backing Helion Energy.
The reason is simple: data centers are on track to become one of the largest energy consumers on the planet. Traditional renewables alone won’t meet the 24/7 baseload power demands of advanced AI infrastructure. Fusion, by contrast, promises clean, continuous energy — without carbon emissions or radioactive waste.
The Promise of Fusion
Nuclear fusion replicates the process that powers the Sun: fusing atomic nuclei to release vast amounts of energy. Unlike fission, which splits heavy atoms and produces hazardous waste, fusion’s by-products are safe and minimal.
Most current fusion projects rely on deuterium-tritium (D-T) fuel — a combination that emits high-energy neutrons and requires handling of radioactive tritium. But a next-generation alternative, deuterium-helium-3 (D-³He) fusion, eliminates those issues entirely. It produces no long-lived radioactive waste and could directly convert fusion energy into electricity at up to 70–80% efficiency.
Helium-3’s molecular configuration makes it the “holy grail” of fusion fuels — clean, safe, and efficient. There’s only one problem: helium-3 is almost nonexistent on Earth. Global terrestrial reserves are in the tens of kilograms.
A Hundred-Year Supply Waiting on the Moon
While Earth is shielded by a magnetic field that deflects solar particles, the Moon is not. Over billions of years, the solar wind has embedded helium-3 atoms across its surface layer — a thin but planet-wide deposit representing a hundred-year energy reserve for the fusion era.
That’s the opportunity Magna Petra is pursuing. The company has developed AI-guided modular extraction systems capable of harvesting unbonded helium-3 molecules from the top 100 nanometers of lunar regolith — without destructive thermal processing.
Through a formal collaboration with Japan’s ispace Inc., Magna Petra will deploy its LunarPro™ extraction hardware on upcoming surface missions, establishing the world’s first commercial helium-3 supply chain. The partnership leverages a proven ecosystem of deep-space operators — including NASA-developed instrumentation, SpaceX-enabled transport, and ispace’s cislunar delivery systems — to validate, capture, and return helium-3 to Earth for industrial use.
The Fuel for an AI Civilization
If fusion power represents the next leap in human energy, helium-3 is its enabler. It’s the clean, scalable, and geopolitically neutral fuel that can power quantum computers, AI data centers, and entire nations without the environmental or security costs of fission.
In other words, fusion is the engine — but helium-3 is the fuel. And with a century’s worth of it locked in the Moon’s dust, the race is no longer just about building a reactor. It’s about securing the supply chain that will define the energy economy of the next hundred years.
Magna Petra’s CEO Jeffrey Max summarized it best: “The Moon is not a curiosity — it’s the foundation of our future energy infrastructure.”
