Making clean, scalable fusion power plants a reality: An interview with Proxima co-founder and CEO Francesco Sciortino

Have a listen to our interview with Francesco Sciortino, whose deep tech company Proxima Fusion aims to build an entirely new generation of fusion power plants, using QI stellarators.

Proxima Fusion is the first-ever spin-out company from the Max Planck Society Institute for Plasma Physics, which happens to have built and operates the most advanced stellarator on the planet, W7-X. Research over the past decade or so has now set the stage for the Munich startup to leverage modern optimisation tools and design capabilities, and accelerate fusion power.

To achieve that, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Tesla and Google X scientists and engineers have already joined the Germany-based company, and Proxima Fusion last year raised €7.5 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Plural and UVC Partners and joined by High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) and the Wilbe Group.

Have a listen to the interview to learn more about why Germany is fertile ground for innovation in the field of stellarators, how the design of a new generation of — continuous — fusion power plants could (and should) be accelerated in the current and next decade, and how the technology can be scaled in (and for) the future.

Sciortino also talks about the need to build an ecosystem around fusion power, why Proxima has recently applied to receive funding from the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator, his insights on the public and private funding landscape in Europe and on the availability of and access to key talent in this part of the world.

For more interviews with deep tech scale-up founders, investors and other stakeholders, check out the EIC Scaling Club news section and/or subscribe to its monthly newsletter.

(Tech.eu / Webrazzi is a partner in the EIC Scaling Club programme, which aims to connect high-growth European deep tech companies with investors, corporate innovators and many more to level up the ecosystem).

Lead image: Francesco Sciortino. Photo: Dominik Gigler for DLD / Hubert Burda Media