Google backs Proxima Fusion in €411 million raise, a bet on Europe’s path to commercial fusion

Google has joined a large funding round for Proxima Fusion, a Munich, Germany-based nuclear fusion startup, as Europe intensifies efforts to reach a first commercial fusion power plant. The company behind Google’s Alphabet business says the investment is part of a wider push to support longer-term, carbon-free energy research, according to coverage of Proxima’s announcement.

Proxima said the funding totals €411 million, or about $468 million, and values the fusion startup at nearly €2.4 billion (about $2.7 billion). The round was led by XTX Ventures and East X Ventures, with additional investors including Google and RWE, the company said in connection with the financing. Proxima also described the result as making it the best-capitalized fusion company in Europe.

The startup was founded in April 2023 as a spin-out of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics. Proxima is building what it calls Quasi-Isodynamic (QI) stellarators, a type of magnetic confinement reactor designed to hold extremely hot, ionized gas, or plasma, using powerful magnetic fields rather than gravity or physical containers.

Stellarators are often described as doughnut-shaped devices that use magnetic arrangements to keep plasma stable long enough for fusion reactions to occur. In Proxima’s case, the company says its technology builds on decades of research associated with the Wendelstein 7-X program, which has been an important European experimental platform for stellarator research. Proxima’s approach is aimed at advancing the engineering steps needed to turn fusion concepts into electricity-producing systems.

RWE’s role reflects the way utilities and grid operators are starting to treat next-generation fusion as a potential future source of low-carbon power. Coverage of the funding round said RWE invested €25 million (about $28.6 million). It also noted that this comes after RWE signed a partnership agreement with Proxima to build a stellarator fusion power plant at the site of a former nuclear fission power plant in Gundremmingen, Bavaria.

Proxima’s fundraising message is closely tied to the pace of global fusion competition. Reporting on the announcement described Europe as racing the United States and China in efforts to be first to achieve commercial fusion, with the new financing intended to accelerate development. Proxima CEO Francesco Sciortino was quoted describing the raise as evidence Europe can build companies around breakthrough fusion technologies, not only invent them.

From Google’s perspective, backing a fusion startup fits a broader pattern of large technology firms exploring energy systems that could reshape long-term computing and data center demand. Fusion, if it reaches practical power generation, is generally viewed as a way to produce electricity without the carbon emissions associated with burning fossil fuels and without the highly radioactive waste profile of conventional nuclear fission. Proxima’s announcement framed the investment as continuing Google’s interest in fusion and nuclear energy as a potential source of long-term carbon-free electricity.

Still, much remains undisclosed about timelines and technical milestones. In the coverage available for this story, Proxima and its investors did not provide detailed schedules for when a commercial reactor might be operational, nor did they outline specific construction or regulatory steps tied to the Gundremmingen partnership beyond describing the site and the intent to develop a power plant there.