Germany’s PROXIMA FUSION raises €411 million to take European nuclear fusion into the industrial era

For decades, nuclear fusion remained a distant scientific prospect. Records were set in laboratories, funding came primarily from governments, and commercial promises always seemed to be pushed back by another decade. The €411 million funding round completed by Germany’s Proxima Fusion changes the nature of the debate.

First, because of its size: the transaction values the company at €2.4 billion and represents the largest private fusion funding round ever completed in Europe. More importantly, because of the investors it brings together: alongside XTX Ventures and East X Ventures are now RWE, Germany’s largest electricity producer, and Google, whose energy requirements are soaring with the development of artificial intelligence.

Europe is finally willing to finance infrastructure before a market even exists

A spin-off from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, the company has progressed from a €7 million pre-seed round in 2023 to a €20 million Seed round in 2024, followed by a €130 million Series A in 2025 and now this €411 million round. In less than three years, it has secured more than €650 million, in addition to €95 million in public funding.

This progression reflects a major shift in the way European capital approaches breakthrough technologies.

Until recently, funding rounds worth several hundred million euros mainly concerned software, digital platforms and artificial intelligence. Fusion belongs to a radically different category. Investment precedes any prospect of significant revenue by several years, if not a decade. Scientific risks remain high, while capital requirements are comparable to those of major industrial infrastructure projects.

European venture capital is beginning to adopt strategies that were previously associated with large-scale industrial programmes.

Fusion becomes a matter of sovereignty

Since the 2022 energy crisis, security of supply has once again become a strategic objective of European industrial policy. At the same time, the rise of artificial intelligence is driving a surge in the electricity requirements of data centres. According to projections from the International Energy Agency (IEA), global data-centre electricity consumption is expected to almost double to 950 TWh by 2030, a level comparable to Japan’s current annual consumption. Artificial intelligence is the main driver of this growth.

From this perspective, fusion is no longer solely a scientific project. It is becoming a technology that could sustainably support Europe’s future electricity requirements.

Why Google and RWE are investing today

The simultaneous arrival of a long-established energy company and a digital giant is the clearest signal sent by this transaction. For RWE, the rationale is evident. Together with Proxima Fusion and the state of Bavaria, the group is already participating in the development of an initial commercial power plant at the site of its former Gundremmingen nuclear facility. The investment provides a strategic option on a technology capable of producing dispatchable, carbon-free electricity while consuming very little fuel.

Google’s rationale is different but equally compelling: artificial intelligence infrastructure requires a continuous supply of electricity. Hyperscalers are already investing heavily in power grids, small nuclear reactors and renewable energy to secure their supplies. Google’s investment in Proxima marks the group’s first European investment in a fusion company and forms part of a global strategy to diversify the energy technologies capable of powering future computing facilities.

The real challenge is no longer physics but industrialisation

Contrary to what this funding round might suggest, the €411 million will not be used solely to build the Alpha demonstrator. A significant portion of the investment will be devoted to industrialising key technologies: manufacturing high-temperature superconducting (HTS) coils and cables, scaling up magnet production, and developing the industrial processes and engineering systems required to assemble future stellarators.

In other words, Proxima is no longer merely seeking to demonstrate that a fusion reactor can operate; the company is building the industrial supply chain required to manufacture such reactors at scale. This approach has already been observed in semiconductors and batteries, where control over manufacturing processes often represents a competitive advantage every bit as decisive as the scientific innovation itself.

The stellarator bet

Proxima has also chosen a less common technological path than most of its competitors. While the majority of private companies are developing tokamaks, the German company is betting on the stellarator, a magnetic-confinement architecture historically regarded as much more complex to design but potentially more stable for continuous industrial operation.

Its approach builds directly on the results of the Wendelstein 7-X programme, developed over several decades by the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics.

The Alpha demonstrator, which is expected to begin operating in the early 2030s, will have to prove that a stellarator can achieve net energy gain. If this milestone is reached, Proxima then intends to build Stellaris, presented as the first commercial power plant based on this architecture, before the end of the 2030s.

A startup that already resembles an industrial prime contractor

Proxima has brought together more than 50 industrial partners, the Bavarian government, the Max Planck Institute and RWE around the Alpha project. This structure is more reminiscent of major aerospace or space programmes than of the traditional venture capital ecosystem.

The startup retains control of the technology and overall architecture, while industrial partners progressively develop the different components required for the future power plant.

This model offers several advantages: it reduces technical risks, accelerates the development of industrial capacity and involves future operators at a very early stage.

A new generation of European DeepTech

Since the beginning of the year, Europe’s largest funding rounds have increasingly involved physical infrastructure: photonics, robotics, semiconductors, advanced materials and quantum technologies. European DeepTech is no longer seeking merely to produce scientific innovations. It now aims to rebuild industrial capacity on the continent.

Within this landscape, fusion could become one of Europe’s next strategically important industries.

Many scientific and technological obstacles remain before a commercial power plant can inject its first megawatts into the grid. One thing, however, now appears clear: global competition will be determined by the ability to finance complete industrial supply chains, mobilise energy companies, manufacturers and investors, and ultimately transform a scientific discovery into strategic infrastructure.

Proxima Fusion was founded in 2020 by Francesco Sciortino, a physicist specialising in fusion and a former researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, alongside Roger Jäggi, Maximilian Fichtl and Luca Schwarz. Since its creation, the company has assembled a team of engineers and specialists in superconductors, plasma physics, numerical simulation and industrial systems, recruited in particular from the Max Planck Institute, CERN, the energy industry and the aerospace sector. The company now employs more than 100 people and plans to expand its engineering, manufacturing and operations teams rapidly to accelerate the development of the Alpha demonstrator and prepare the future industrial capacity required to commercialise its fusion power plants.