Fusion energy company Proxima Fusion has raised €130 million Series A financing — the largest private fusion investment round in Europe.This brings Proxima Fusion’s total funding to more than €185 million, accelerating its mission to build the world’s first commercial fusion power plant based on a stellarator design.
Proxima Fusion spun out of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in 2023 to build fusion power plants using QI-HTS stellarators. Proxima has since assembled a world-class team of engineers, scientists and operators from leading companies and institutions, such as the IPP, MIT, Harvard, SpaceX, Tesla, and McLaren.
By taking a simulation-driven approach to engineering that leverages advanced computing and high-temperature superconductors to build on the groundbreaking results of the IPP’s W7-X stellarator, Proxima is leading Europe into a new era of clean energy, for good.
As the first peer-reviewed stellarator concept to integrate physics, engineering, and maintenance considerations from the outset, Stellaris has been widely recognised 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.
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 spectacular 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."
Cherry Ventures and Balderton Capital co-led the funding, with significant participation from UVC Partners, DeepTech & Climate Fonds (DTCF), Plural, Leitmotif, Lightspeed, Visionaries Tomorrow, Bayern Kapital, HTGF, Club degli Investitori, OMNES Capital, Elaia Partners and redalpine, the latter of which led Proxima Fusion's seed round just one year ago.
The EU, as well as national governments including Germany, UK, France and Italy, increasingly recognise 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.
“We back founders solving humanity’s hardest problems — and few are bigger than clean, limitless energy," said Filip Dames, Cherry Ventures Founding Partner.”
Daniel Waterhouse, Partner at Balderton Capital, said:
“Stellarators aren't just the most technologically viable approach to fusion energy — they're the power plants of the future, capable of leading Europe into a new era of clean energy.
Proxima has firmly secured its position as the leading European contender in the global race to commercial fusion.”
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 finalise 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 team of over 80 across three offices: at the headquarters in Munich, at the Paul Scherrer Institute near Zurich, and at the Culham Fusion Campus near Oxford.
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