Google backs Proxima Fusion in $470M round targeting Europe’s 1st commercial fusion power plant

Google has joined a €411 million (about $470 million) financing round for German nuclear fusion startup Proxima Fusion, which aims to build Europe’s first commercial fusion power plant, the company announced Tuesday.

The Munich-based company said the round lifted its valuation to €2.4 billion ($2.7 billion), establishing it as the best-funded fusion company in Europe.

The financing was led by XTX Ventures and East X Ventures, with German energy company RWE and Google participating as strategic investors. KfW Capital, SPRIND and Burda Principal Investments also joined the round, alongside returning investors including Plural, UVC Partners, Balderton, Cherry Ventures and others.

Proxima said Google’s investment reflects the technology company’s continued interest in fusion as a potential source of “abundant, carbon-free, firm energy” over the long term.

Fusion is the process of combining light atoms, typically hydrogen isotopes, to release energy. Unlike existing nuclear power plants, which use fission by splitting atoms, fusion has not yet been deployed commercially.

Proxima is developing stellarator fusion technology and plans to build Alpha, a net-energy fusion demonstrator near Munich, in the early 2030s. The company says Alpha will serve as a bridge between decades of fusion research and commercial deployment, paving the way for Stellaris, its planned commercial power plant using stellarator fusion, later in the decade.

“Europe is racing with the United States and China to get to the first fusion power plant,” Proxima co-founder and CEO Francesco Sciortino said in a statement.

“Proxima’s financing demonstrates that Europe can not only invent breakthrough technologies, but also build globally competitive companies around them,” he added.

The company said the new funding will be used to complete its Stellarator Model Coil, expand high-temperature superconducting cable and magnet production, and further develop the engineering and manufacturing systems required for stellarators.

Proxima also said it will accelerate hiring across engineering, manufacturing and operations as part of its vertical integration strategy.

RWE became an investor months after signing an agreement with Proxima, the Free State of Bavaria and the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics to support the development of the first stellarator fusion power plant at the site of a former nuclear fission plant in Gundremmingen, Bavaria.

Proxima, founded as a spin-out from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, said it has secured more than €650 million in total funding, including €95 million in public grants, in less than three years.

• German energy company RWE
• German nuclear fusion startup Proxima Fusion
• XTX Ventures and East X Ventures