German Startup Raises Record Funds to Advance Nuclear Fusion

Germany-based start-up Proxima Fusion on Wednesday announced the close of a $150 million financing, the largest private fusion investment round in Europe, as companies are looking to finally achieve the breakthrough of unlimited clean fusion energy.Proxima Fusion’s Series A financing was co-led by Cherry Ventures and Balderton Capital, with participation from a dozen other investment firms.Proxima Fusion was founded in early 2023 as the first-ever spin-out from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Germany. Proxima aims to lead Europe into a new era of clean energy. The EU, as well as national governments including Germany, UK, France, and Italy, increasingly recognize fusion as a generational technology essential for energy sovereignty, industrial competitiveness, and carbon-neutral economic growth, the start-up says.The latest round brings Proxima Fusion’s total funding to more than $200 million (185 million euros), aimed at helping the company build the world’s first commercial fusion power plant based on a stellarator design—a machine that uses magnetic fields to confine plasma in the shape of a donut.A stellarator would be more complicated to build than a tokamak, the more popular experimental reactor for nuclear fusion on which more start-ups and ventures are focused. However, a stellarator is expected to produce a more stable plasma, according to Proxima Fusion, which believes the stellarator plasma would be more suited for use in a power plant.Thanks to the new funding, Proxima Fusion aims to complete its hardware demonstration Stellarator Model Coil (SMC) in 2027. Proxima will also finalize a site for Alpha, its demonstration stellarator, for which it is in talks with several European governments. The site is scheduled to begin operations in 2031, and is the key step to demonstrating net energy gain and moving towards a first-of-a-kind fusion power plant.“We back founders solving humanity’s hardest problems — and few are bigger than clean, limitless energy,” said Filip Dames, Cherry Ventures Founding Partner.By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com