Proxima Fusion raises EUR411 million as Francesco Sciortino turns stellarators into Europe's industrial fusion bet

Why it matters

Proxima's round shows how AI-era power demand and European industrial policy are pulling fusion startups out of research labs and into infrastructure-scale financing years before commercial revenue.

Proxima Fusion co-founder and CEO Francesco Sciortino has raised EUR411 million in new financing at a EUR2.4 billion valuation, pulling Google and German utility RWE into one of Europe's largest private bets on commercial fusion.

Reuters reported on July 7th that the Munich-based magnetic fusion startup raised the round from investors including Alphabet's Google and RWE. RWE invested EUR25 million, according to Reuters. Proxima's own announcement says the financing was led by XTX Ventures and East X Ventures, with Google and RWE as strategic investors, and joined by KfW Capital, SPRIND, Burda Principal Investments and a long list of returning investors including Plural, UVC Partners, Balderton, Cherry Ventures, DST Global Partners, Lightspeed, redalpine, Elaia, Bayern Kapital and the EIC Fund.

The money gives Sciortino a larger balance sheet for the hard part of the company he spun out of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in 2023: turning a public-research lineage around Wendelstein 7-X into industrial hardware that can survive the capital costs, construction risk and timeline slippage that have defined fusion for decades.

Sciortino is a plasma physicist, not a power-sector lifer. Proxima says he studied at Imperial College and EPFL, completed a PhD in plasma physics and fusion energy at MIT, and later coordinated European tokamak research at Max Planck IPP before shifting his focus toward stellarators after advances around Wendelstein 7-X. His co-founders came from the same technical orbit: Lucio Milanese, now Proxima's Chief External Affairs Officer, holds a PhD in theoretical plasma physics from MIT and previously advised investors and companies on fusion topics at McKinsey, according to Proxima and the European Innovation Council; Jorrit Lion, Proxima's Chief Scientist, worked on how a Wendelstein 7-X-derived stellarator could be designed for commercial power; Jonathan Schilling analyzed plasma behavior in W7-X experiments; and Martin Kubie brought engineering experience from McLaren Racing and Wing, the Google X spin-off.

That mix explains the financing. Proxima is selling investors on a technical route that was historically harder to design than tokamaks, yet potentially easier to operate continuously once designed. On its technology page, Proxima says its quasi-isodynamic stellarator approach combines stellarator geometry, high-temperature superconducting magnets and simulation-led optimization through its StarFinder design framework. The company's claim is that modern computing and HTS magnets have changed the cost and feasibility curve for stellarators.

The financing is really for Alpha

Proxima says the EUR411 million round will fund Alpha, its net-energy stellarator demonstrator near Munich, along with work on the Stellarator Model Coil, high-temperature superconducting cable and magnet production, and the engineering and manufacturing systems needed to build stellarators. Proxima says it has now secured more than EUR650 million in total, including EUR95 million in public grants.

The Alpha timeline remains long. Proxima's public roadmap puts completion of the Stellarator Model Coil in 2027 and Alpha in the early 2030s. Proxima says Stellaris, its planned commercial stellarator power plant, would follow later in the 2030s. That roadmap matters because the EUR2.4 billion valuation is attached to a pre-commercial energy company whose decisive milestones are still years away.

The round also follows a February 26th agreement between Proxima, RWE, the Free State of Bavaria and Max Planck IPP to build Alpha near IPP in Garching and plan Stellaris for Gundremmingen, the site of a former RWE nuclear fission power plant. In that agreement, RWE's role was operational and industrial: Proxima said the utility would contribute power plant construction, operations and site expertise. With this round, RWE is also on the cap table.

The strategic logic is plain. RWE gets a claim on a possible future baseload power source and a path to reuse power-sector infrastructure. Google gets optionality around carbon-free firm power at a time when AI data centers are forcing large technology companies to secure more electricity on longer time horizons. Neither investment should be read as evidence that fusion power is near the grid. It does show that major electricity buyers and operators are willing to finance the companies that might own the supply curve a decade from now.

Europe is trying to commercialize its own science

Proxima's round is a European answer to a fusion market that has been dominated by U.S. private capital and a handful of heavily funded American startups. Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Helion Energy, TAE, Type One Energy and Thea Energy have all pushed different approaches to the same problem: proving net energy, building repeatable machines and convincing power buyers that fusion can become an asset class rather than a science project.

Proxima's narrower claim is that Europe already paid for much of the scientific base. The Max Planck IPP's Wendelstein 7-X program provided the experimental lineage; Proxima's job is to turn that lineage into a product, a supply chain and a financing model. In its June 2025 Series A announcement, Proxima said it raised EUR130 million to build a stellarator-based fusion power plant in the 2030s. One year later, the company is raising at a scale normally reserved for infrastructure-like hardware companies, with public-sector grants and state support sitting beside venture money.

That public-private structure cuts both ways. It gives Proxima access to government support, research institutions and industrial partners that would be difficult for a small startup to assemble alone. It also ties the company to political budgets, permitting decisions and public expectations around a technology that has repeatedly slipped its timelines across the industry.

The open commercial questions remain basic. Proxima has not disclosed revenue, power-purchase agreements, commercial pricing or customer commitments. Google is a strategic investor in the round, but the disclosed materials do not say it is buying future electricity from Proxima. Reuters reported RWE's EUR25 million investment; Google's check size was not disclosed.

Sciortino's bet is now an execution story

The new round changes Proxima's burden of proof. A EUR411 million financing can fund magnets, hiring and manufacturing systems; it cannot compress the physics and engineering validation that Alpha must still deliver. Proxima says it employs around 200 people across Munich, Zurich and Oxford, up sharply from the 80-plus staff it cited around its 2025 Series A. The hiring profile now matters as much as the science profile, because building a stellarator company requires manufacturing discipline, procurement, controls, software, site work and power-sector credibility.

Sciortino has framed Proxima as proof that Europe can build companies around its own research base. In Proxima's announcement, he said the financing shows Europe can invent breakthrough technologies and build globally competitive companies around them. The quote is founder rhetoric, but the cap table gives it more weight than a policy speech. XTX Ventures and East X Ventures led the round; Google and RWE joined as strategic investors; public investors and European venture firms filled in around them.

The next measurable milestone is the Stellarator Model Coil in 2027. If Proxima hits it, the financing will look like an early industrial stake in a company moving from simulation and research into hardware. If Alpha drifts deeper into the 2030s, the same round will read as another reminder that fusion financing has become easier to raise than fusion power is to deliver.

For now, Sciortino has done the part founders can control: assemble the technical team, attach the company to credible research infrastructure, secure strategic capital and give Proxima enough money to move the stellarator debate from papers and renderings into factories and sites. The next phase will be judged in magnets, construction schedules and plasma performance.