Record financing for Proxima Fusion
The Max Planck spin-out raises €130 million for the development of a fusion power plant
To the point:
- Capital for nuclear fusion: Munich-based start-up Proxima Fusion raises €130 million to complete key elements of a stellarator-based fusion power plant.
- Record financing: The capital represents the largest private investment in nuclear fusion in Europe.
- New energy source: The world's first stellarator-based fusion power plant is scheduled to be built in the 2030s.
Proxima Fusion, a spin-out from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, has raised €130 million in capital. The company plans to use the funds to finance the development of the world's first stellarator-based fusion power plant, which is scheduled to be built in the 2030s. The investment represents the largest private financing round in the field of fusion energy in Europe to date. Proxima Fusion now has a total of more than €185 million in public and private funding at its disposal.
Francesco Sciortino, CEO and Co-founder of Proxima Fusion, said: "Fusion has become a real, strategic opportunity to shift global energy dependence from natural resources to technological leadership. Proxima is perfectly positioned to harness that momentum by uniting a great engineering and manufacturing team with world-leading research institutions, accelerating the path toward bringing the first European fusion power plant online in the next decade."
Shifting global energy dependence
Proxima was founded in April 2023 as a spin-out from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP), with which it continues to work closely in a public-private partnership to lead Europe into a new era of clean energy. The EU, as well as national governments including Germany, UK, France and Italy, increasingly recognize fusion as a generational technology essential for energy sovereignty, industrial competitiveness, and carbon-neutral economic growth.
By building on Europe’s long-standing public fusion investment and industrial supply chains, Proxima Fusion is laying the groundwork for a new high-tech energy industry — one that transforms the continent from a leader in fusion research to a global powerhouse in fusion deployment.
Just earlier this year, together with the IPP, KIT and other partners, Proxima unveiled Stellaris. As the first peer-reviewed stellarator concept to integrate physics, engineering, and maintenance considerations from the outset, Stellaris has been widely recognized as a major breakthrough for the fusion industry, advancing the case for quasi-isodynamic (QI) stellarators as the most promising pathway to a commercial fusion power plant.
With this new funding, the company will complete its Stellarator Model Coil (SMC) in 2027, a major hardware demonstration that will de-risk high-temperature superconductor (HTS) technology for stellarators and stimulate European HTS innovation. Proxima will also finalize a site for Alpha, its demonstration stellarator, for which it is in talks with several European governments already. Alpha is scheduled to begin operations in 2031, and is the key step to demonstrating Q>1 (net energy gain) and moving towards a first-of-a-kind fusion power plant. The company will continue to grow its 80+-strong team across three offices: at the headquarters in Munich, at the Paul Scherrer Institute near Zurich (Switzerland), and at the Culham fusion campus near Oxford (UK).
“Fusion energy is entering a new era—moving from lab-based science to industrial-scale engineering,” said Francesco Sciortino. “This investment validates our approach and gives us the resources to deliver hardware that is essential to make clean fusion power a reality.”
Read the full story in the Proxima Fusion press release. (On the left.)