See "Induction systems"[1] The concept was proposed in 1963, but nobody ever made it work. That's the plan. Magnetohydrodynamic generators [2] do work, but they have electrodes in the gas. That works for jet engine type MHD generators, but fusion plasma is too hot for any solid material.

What they're trying to do is known physics but very hard engineering.

They're also trying for aneutronic fusion, using helium-3. If the plant generates large volumes of neutrons, it chews up the first wall between the reaction and the outside. It also makes what it hits radioactive, so there's a waste problem. Aneutronic fusion uses reactions that (mostly) generate alphas and betas. This is, again, known physics but very hard engineering.

If they can get a demo machine going which solves either problem, that would be a huge advance. So far, that does not seem to have happened.

There are other startups in this space. It's probably the way commercial fusion power will eventually be done. Not via the tokamaks, like ITER.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_energy_conversion

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetohydrodynamic_generator

[3] https://spectrum.ieee.org/aneutronic-fusion

> There are other startups in this space. It's probably the way commercial fusion power will eventually be done. Not via the tokamaks, like ITER.

There is literally no evidence to suggest this: Helion are making big claims but as noted have shown little incremental progress on their machines.

The balance of history says if it happens it'll come out of a large government funded project: that's how fission happened, and there's plain old fission startups too who also are yet to deliver anything and we know fission works.