The funding, which Proxima said is the largest-ever private investment in European fusion, brings the company’s valuation to €2.4bn.

German start-up Proxima Fusion has raised €411m in a financing round to aid the development of its fusion power technologies.

Proxima is designing and building fusion power plants using quasi-isodynamic (QI) stellarators – machines that use magnetic fields to confine plasma – to bring “limitless, safe, clean energy to the grid”, according to the company.

Fusion power is a potential method of energy generation that uses heat released by nuclear fusion reactions. As a potential alternative to nuclear fission, which is used by current nuclear power plants, fusion offers advantages such as minimal high-level radioactive waste and lower safety risks, although it has not been deployed commercially yet due to technical challenges.

The funding round, which was led by XTX Ventures and East X Ventures with RWE and Google as strategic investors, brings Proxima’s valuation to €2.4bn.

Other investors that joined the round include KfW Capital, SPRIND and Burda Principal Investments, alongside returning investors including Plural, Balderton, the EIC Fund and Lightspeed, to name a few.

According to Proxima, the funding is the largest-ever private investment in European fusion.

“Europe is racing with the United States and China to get to the first fusion power plant. Proxima’s financing demonstrates that Europe can not only invent breakthrough technologies, but also build globally competitive companies around them,” said Dr Francesco Sciortino, co-founder and CEO of the company.

“Investors recognise both the urgency and the opportunity of what we’re doing and are backing us to develop a generational energy technology company.”

The funding will be used to build Alpha, a net-energy stellarator demonstrator near Munich targeted for the early 2030s. Proxima describes Alpha as the “critical bridge between decades of fusion research and commercial deployment”.

The project – which will be led by Proxima in partnership with the state of Bavaria, the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics and RWE – hopes to validate key technologies and accelerate the development of the world’s first fusion power plant “later that decade”.

The company will also use the financing to focus on completion of its stellarator model coil, expansion of high-temperature superconducting cable and magnet production, and continued development of the engineering and manufacturing systems required for stellarators. Proxima also stated that it will be hiring across engineering, manufacturing and operations to accelerate progress.

Proxima Fusion was founded in 2023 by Sciortino, Lucio Milanese, Jorrit Lion, Martin Kubie and Jonathan Schilling, and was the first spin-out from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics.

While it’s headquartered in Munich, Proxima also has offices in Zurich and Oxford.

Since its establishment, the company – which employs around 200 people – has secured more than €650m in funding, including €95m in public grants.

This most recent funding round comes three months after the company signed a memorandum of understanding with the Free State of Bavaria, RWE and the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics to put the world’s first commercial stellarator fusion power plant on the grid in Europe.

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