By analogy, imagine an aeroplane in a wind tunnel. It's not the real aeroplane - it's a scale model. It has no engine and it's not moving, the wind is moving over it. On one level the experiment hasn't achieved anything - that model can never do anything useful in the real world.
But we are making measurements on aerodynamic performance - on another level we have learned that if you can make an aircraft that shape and give it an engine that moves it at the same speed as the airflow, then the aeroplane will generate enough lift to keep it in the air. That's a really important result that gets us significantly closer to a useful aeroplane. If separately someone has demonstrated an engine with suitable weight and power characteristics to match, then we can say "now we just need to build the aircraft and it should fly".
Helion involves a unique method of extracting energy from the fusion process (direct extraction from the magnetic field). That's new and therefore uncertain. Producing a reactor that performs something fusion-like and generates electricity in that way is a great result even if the fusion process isn't generating as much power as it should and is fundamentally driven by electricity. Like the plane above, if they have separately demonstrated a fusion process that is powerful enough, "all" they need to do now is put the two things together.
I guess I'll forever be apologizing for that post, but (as I mentioned in another, after digging into their technology) there was no mention of the novelty of their approach to generation in Sam's announcement. So "they have built a generator that produces electricity" has little meaning outside of the context of most commonly-known methods of generating electricity from fusion, i.e., heat.
I think if I were a billionaire investing in fusion technologies, I think I'd be sure to mention my investment's special sauce when I drop a few sticks on it.
It was a reasonable question based on the linked article. Fusion announcements (like new battery chemistries) are almost worthless on their own - you have to read more about the company, what stage they're at, what the tech actually is etc.
But we are making measurements on aerodynamic performance - on another level we have learned that if you can make an aircraft that shape and give it an engine that moves it at the same speed as the airflow, then the aeroplane will generate enough lift to keep it in the air. That's a really important result that gets us significantly closer to a useful aeroplane. If separately someone has demonstrated an engine with suitable weight and power characteristics to match, then we can say "now we just need to build the aircraft and it should fly".
Helion involves a unique method of extracting energy from the fusion process (direct extraction from the magnetic field). That's new and therefore uncertain. Producing a reactor that performs something fusion-like and generates electricity in that way is a great result even if the fusion process isn't generating as much power as it should and is fundamentally driven by electricity. Like the plane above, if they have separately demonstrated a fusion process that is powerful enough, "all" they need to do now is put the two things together.