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The German startup has secured a record 130 million euros in funding to develop fusion energy technology to bolster its betting on Europe’s potential in the competition to create abundant zero emissions by combining atoms.
The investment in Munich-based Proximous Fusion, led by technology investors Cherry Ventures and Balderton Capital, is the largest ever in the European fusion sector.
Philip Dams, founding partner of Cherry Ventures, explained that he “bets on European capabilities in solving one of humanity’s greatest challenges.”
“There aren’t that many trillion dollar companies all over the world, but if there’s one company that can do that, I think it’s Proxima,” he told the Financial Times.
Spinning two years ago from the Max Planck Institute in Germany with its first funding of 7 million euros, Proxima is about to build a device called Stellarator, which it considers to be the most viable route to commercial fusion power. This replaces the more common tokamak pioneered by Soviet scientists in the 1950s.
Both devices use giant magnets to heat to extreme temperatures, thus suspending floating masses of hydrogen plasma, and the nuclei fuse together to release a large amount of energy. The twisted structure of the stellarator is more complicated to build, but should produce a more stable plasma than Proxima is more suitable for the power plant.
Almost all of the so-called magnetic confinement fusions have been led until recently by traditional tokamaks, with American companies raising far greater sums than Proxima.
The federal fusion system, backed by Bill Gates, who is building a demonstration of tokamac devices in Massachusetts, raised a record $1.8 billion in 2021, while Sam Altman-backed Hellion raised $425 million in January.
However, it is not yet able to generate more energy than the system consumes. Some scientists believe that commercial fusion power is decades apart.
Proxima CEO Francesco Ciortino said by 2027 the funds will be paid to build a powerful unique magnet called the Stellator Model Coil. “That’s the history-changing magnet,” he told Fort.
far right, Proxima co-founder ©Proxima, including its CEO Francesco Sialtino.
The company will then build a demonstration plant at a cost of around 1 billion euros by 2031, with Sciortino hoping that the European government can partially fund it, followed by its first commercial fusion power plant 10 years later.
Germany’s recently appointed Prime Minister Friedrich Merz is a passionate supporter of Fusion Research, saying that Germany should host the world’s first fusion power plant. “Our important message to Prime Minister Mertz is that we have requested a German lighthouse project. We are offering a lighthouse project,” says Sciortino.
Daniel Waterhouse, general partner at Balderton Capital, said his tech-focused fund was impressed by Proxima’s “exceptional team” and its ability to leverage simulation software to overcome design problems.
“It’s definitely a different kind of risk profile than what you have in software investment,” he said. “What gave us confidence is that we believe the physics here has been resolved.”
Sciortino said Europe, who had been the world leader in Fusion Research for decades, risked delaying at key moments if they didn’t support private companies trying to make their fusion power a reality. The world’s most advanced and existing stellarator, built by government-funded scientists, is in Greifswald, East Germany.
“If we don’t invest at the right time as a government (after that), it’s all useless,” the Proxima chief said. “You just did science to help our American and Chinese colleagues.”
