German firm advances plan to build world's first nuclear fusion plant

Proxima Fusion, a Munich-based start-up spun out from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in 2023, has secured €130 million ($150 million) in its Series A funding round, bringing total funding to over €185 million ($213 million). The company aims to build the world’s first commercial nuclear fusion power plant using a stellarator design, leveraging a simulation-driven engineering approach and high-temperature superconducting (HTS) technology. Key near-term milestones include completing the Stellarator Model Coil (SMC) by 2027 to demonstrate HTS application and selecting a site for its demonstration stellarator, “Alpha,” which is planned to begin operations by 2031. Alpha is intended to achieve net energy gain (Q>1), a critical step toward a functional fusion power plant. Proxima Fusion’s technical strategy centers on the “Stellaris” concept, the first peer-reviewed stellarator design integrating physics, engineering, and maintenance from inception. This quasi-isodynamic stellarator