Company is spin-out from Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics
Proxima Fusion, a spinoff of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Germany, has raised €20m ($21.7m) in seed funding to build the first generation of fusion power plants based on quasi-isodynamic (QI) stellarators with high-temperature superconductors.
The Munich-based company said the seed round, led by Swiss venture capital firm redalpine, was preempted and oversubscribed, with participation from the Bavarian government-backed Bayern Kapital, German government-backed DeepTech & Climate Fonds, and the Max Planck Foundation.
Existing investors, including Plural, UVC Partners, High-Tech Gründerfonds, Wilbe, and the Tomorrow fund have doubled down on their pre-seed investments, Proxima Fusion said.
A stellarator is a doughnut-shaped ring of precisely positioned magnets that can contain the plasma from which fusion energy is born. Proxima Fusion said QI stellarators hold promise for a carbon-free, safe and effectively limitless source of energy.
The science behind this class of magnetic confinement fusion devices has been the subject of research for more than six decades. However, achieving sustained and commercially viable fusion remains a challenge.
Proxima Fusion said: “In 2022, stellarator optimisation results entirely disrupted the field, enabling Proxima Fusion to tackle these challenges with an engineering- and simulation-focused approach, leveraging advanced computing.”
The company said it is building on groundbreaking results from the Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) experiment, the world’s largest stellarator at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics. Those results follow €1.3bn of “visionary” public investment by the German government and the European Union, Proxima Fusion said.
