Nuclear fusion startup Proxima Fusion has raised €411 million in one of Europe’s largest private tech financings this year, as the Munich-based company races to build the continent’s first commercial fusion champion.
The round, led by XTX Ventures and East X Ventures, values Proxima at €2.4 billion and potentially makes it the best-funded fusion company in Europe. Strategic investors include RWE and Google, with KfW Capital, SPRIND and Burda Principal Investments also joining the round. Existing backers Plural, UVC Partners, Balderton, Cherry Ventures, DST Global Partners, Brevan Howard Macro Venture, Lightspeed, DTCF, redalpine, Leitmotif, Elaia, CDP Venture Capital, Bayern Kapital and the EIC Fund also participated.
The company will use the funding to complete its Stellarator Model Coil, expand high-temperature superconducting cable and magnet production, and build out the engineering and manufacturing systems needed for stellarator fusion.
The financing will fund Alpha, Proxima’s planned “net-energy” stellarator demonstrator near Munich. The project is intended as the bridge between Europe’s decades of fusion research and a commercial power plant later in the 2030s.
Proxima is working with the state of Bavaria, the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics and RWE. The German utility invested just months after signing an agreement with Proxima to explore building a first stellarator fusion plant at the former Gundremmingen nuclear fission site in Bavaria.
Google’s participation points to growing Big Tech interest in fusion as a long-term source of abundant, carbon-free energy, particularly as AI drives up electricity demand.
Founded less than three years ago as the first spin-out from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, Proxima has now secured more than €650 million, including €95 million in public grants. The new round also exceeds the €400 million public funding commitment from Bavaria, underlining how state backing is helping crowd in private capital around strategic energy technologies.
“Europe is racing with the United States and China to get to the first fusion power plant,” said Dr Francesco Sciortino, Proxima’s co-founder and CEO in a statement. “Proxima’s financing demonstrates that Europe can not only invent breakthrough technologies, but also build globally competitive companies around them.”
Proxima currently employs around 200 people across Munich, Zurich and Oxford, and plans to accelerate hiring across engineering, manufacturing and operations.
Its Alpha demonstrator is targeted for the early 2030s. If successful, it would pave the way for Stellaris, which Proxima says could become the world’s first commercial stellarator fusion power plant later that decade.
Proxima is not the only stellarator startup out there however.
Closets to Proxima is Thea Energy, a US, Princeton-origin stellarator company which raised a $100m Series B in May 2026 to scale magnet manufacturing and build its integrated fusion system.
There is also Type One Energy, US stellarator company positioning itself as a fusion technology provider/OEM.
Renaissance Fusion, in Grenoble, France, is developing simplified stellarators and high-temperature superconducting magnet technology, and raised €32m Series A in 2025.
Marvel Fusion is taking a different approach. The Germany/US, laser-based fusion startup raised a €113m Series B extension in 2025 and reported €385m total funding, including public cooperation projects.
In the UK, First Light Fusion is using an ‘inertial fusion’ approach, and raised a £25m first close in 2026 led by East X Ventures/Starmaker One with UKAEA strategic investment. it is less well-funded than Proxima, but still part of the UK venture-backed fusion pack.
