Backing Europe’s fusion champion to ensure the world can meet the exponential rise in energy demand driven by AI and compute infrastructure with clean, limitless power.
The Munich-based company has raised a €411 million Series A2, valuing it at more than €2.4 billion, making it the best-funded fusion company in Europe. Burda Principal Investments (BPI) joined the round, led by XTX Ventures and East X Ventures, alongside RWE and Google as strategic investors. KfW and SPRIN-D also participated in the round with existing investors Plural, UVC Partners, Balderton, Cherry Ventures, Lightspeed, DTCF, redalpine, Leitmotif, Elaia, CDP, Bayern Kapital, and the European Investment Council doubling down.
“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. We’re glad to welcome Burda as a partner on this journey, and value the network and support they bring beyond capital,” said Dr. Francesco Sciortino, Co-Founder and CEO of Proxima Fusion.
Building the bridge from research to commercial fusion
Founded as the first spin-out from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, Proxima Fusion is developing commercial fusion power plants based on its QI-HTS Stellarator design, building on the scientific breakthroughs of the Wendelstein 7-X programme. The company’s current focus is Alpha, a net-energy stellarator device being built near Munich in partnership with the Free State of Bavaria, RWE, and the Max Planck Institute. Alpha is designed to validate the core technologies and systems needed for the world’s first commercial stellarator fusion power plant, Stellaris, planned for later this decade on the site of a former RWE nuclear plant in Gundremmingen, Bavaria.
This financing round fulfils the private capital commitment tied to a February agreement between Bavaria, RWE, the Max Planck Institute, and Proxima, exceeding Bavaria’s €400 million public funding pledge just three months after that MoU was signed. In under three years, Proxima has now raised more than €650 million in total, including €95 million in public grants, and employs around 200 people across its Munich headquarters and offices in Zurich and Oxford.
“Our investment in Proxima Fusion fits perfectly with our investment thesis for the future of compute. Electricity output remains the single best proxy for industrial capacity and therefore access to near-infinite energy is key. The US-EU-China electricity comparison reinforces the strategic urgency for Europe and other parts of the world. For the competitiveness of Europe, it will be crucial that companies like Proxima Fusion succeed and are able to build at pace and at scale. Francesco has built a world-class team and their progress over the last two years has been impressive,” said Christian Teichmann, Executive Board Member at Burda and CEO of Burda Principal Investments.
“Fusion is one of the few technologies that can genuinely change the energy equation, and Proxima is building the industrial capability to get there, not just the theoretical science. We’ve followed the team closely since its early days, and their ability to convert a research breakthrough into a company that can attract capital at this scale, on a timeline measured in months rather than years, is exactly the kind of execution we look for,” said Friedrich von Wulffen, Principal at BPI.
A relationship built over time
BPI’s connection to Proxima goes back well before this round. Having been in regular exchange with Francesco and the team long before this financing also led us to invite him to join BPI’s CEO Christian Teichmann on stage at DLD in 2025, Burda’s innovation conference in Munich. The two had a conversation on how a small team can drive game-changing, machine-learning based engineering, such as simulating hundreds of thousands of design versions of its stellarator. The first contact came through our close collaboration with UnternehmerTUM and its Xpreneurs program. That ongoing dialogue made this investment a natural next step.
A strategic technology for Europe in the age of AI
Proxima’s progress comes as global competition around fusion accelerates, with the US and China investing heavily in the race to commercialise the technology. Proxima’s approach, combining scientific leadership with industrial partnerships and public backing, is increasingly seen as a blueprint for how Europe can build sovereign capability in strategic energy technologies.
The scale of this round, and the identity of its backers, reflects our broader thesis. The exponential growth in AI and compute is driving electricity demand to levels existing grids and generation sources will struggle to meet. Google’s participation as a strategic investor is a signal in its own right: one of the world’s largest consumers of compute-driven power is betting directly on fusion as part of the answer, alongside RWE’s participation as a leading utility. Demand for firm, dense, carbon-free baseload power is no longer a hypothetical for the 2040s; it’s a near-term planning problem for hyperscalers today.
With this round, Proxima will continue building out Alpha, scaling its high-temperature superconducting magnet and cable production, and expanding its engineering and manufacturing teams.
We’re proud to support Proxima Fusion as it works to bring the world’s first commercial stellarator fusion power plant to life, and look forward to being part of its journey.
Read more about Proxima Fusion here.
