Munich-based start-up Proxima Fusion has closed its €130m ($150m) Series A financing round. This brings Proxima Fusion’s total funding to more than €185m in private and public capital, accelerating its mission to build the world’s first commercial fusion power plant based on a stellarator design.
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’ Proxima is taking a simulation-driven approach to engineering that leverages advanced computing and high-temperature superconducting (HTS) technology to build on the groundbreaking results of the IPP’s Wendelstein 7-X stellarator experiment.
The financing was co-led by Cherry Ventures and Balderton Capital, with significant participation from UVC Partners, DeepTech & Climate Fonds (DTCF), Plural, Leitmotif, Lightspeed, Bayern Kapital, HTGF, Club degli Investitori, OMNES Capital, Elaia Partners, Visionaries Tomorrow, and Wilbe, as well as Redalpine, which led Proxima Fusion’s seed round a year ago.
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.”
By building on Europe’s long-standing public fusion investment and industrial supply chains, Proxima Fusion says it 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. “Proxima Fusion combines Europe’s scientific edge with commercial ambition, turning world-class research into one of the most promising fusion ventures globally. This is deep tech at its best, and a bold signal that Europe can lead on the world stage.”
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 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.
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. We are thrilled to partner with Proxima’s game-changing team of engineers, alongside Europe’s top manufacturers, to build a company that will be transformational for Europe.”
With this new funding, the company will complete its Stellarator Model Coil (SMC) in 2027, a major hardware demonstration that will de-risk 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.
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).
Proxima has 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.
