Proxima Fusion

"I believe in fusion—I know it's the future." EU Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation Ekaterina Zaharieva is adamant in her support for the fusion industry. Right now, significant steps are being undertaken to dramatically boost the capacity to invest in technologies key to the future, like fusion. Some of those efforts include the European investment and savings union, an increase in the amount of capital invested in deep tech R&D, the development of efficient pro-growth public-private partnerships, and further leveraging direct public investments like the EIC - European Innovation Council Accelerator and STEP programs alongside private investments. In our meeting with EU Commissioner Zaharieva last week, Proxima and the Fusion Industry Association encouraged the approval of an "Important Project of Common European Interest" (IPCEI) that includes fusion, as well as financial support from the European Innovation Fund and the creation of a multi-billion euro budget line for co-financing fusion demonstrators and first of a kind plants in the next multi-annual financial framework (MFF) of the EU. Europe has a window of opportunity to lead on fusion. With the right tools and support, we can secure a resilient clean energy future. 🇪🇺

With the recent federal elections, Germany has decided to take a bold new approach to fusion energy R&D, committing to unprecedented investments across critical sectors: €400 billion in defense and €500 billion in infrastructure, with €100 billion set aside for energy initiatives. Crucially for the fusion industry, Germany has set an ambitious goal: to be the site of the world's first fusion power plant. The CDU/CSU energy agenda calls for the financing of  two demonstrator pilot plants—one based on magnetic confinement technology, the other utilizing laser technology. That investment will be complemented by a comprehensive R&D initiative aimed at closing all remaining technology gaps toward the world’s first fusion power plant. Germany’s visionary investment in Wendelstein 7-X has already placed it at the forefront of the stellarator race. Now, these latest steps position it as the most favorable environment in the world for public support toward bringing the first fusion-generated electricity onto the grid. As Prospective Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany Friedrich Merz has said: "We want to have the first fusion power plant connected to the grid in Germany." (ZDF Maybrit Illner – November 7, 2024) We’re excited by this momentum and proud to be part of Germany's and Europe’s leadership in fusion innovation. 🇩🇪⚡️🇪🇺

Excited to announce that Proxima Co-Founder and CEO Francesco Sciortino has been nominated as a Newcomer of the Year finalist in the 2025 German Startup Awards! It’s an honor to be recognized in a category full of inspirational innovators like Etienne-Noel Krause of autarc (YC S24) and Kilian Schmid of allunderground. Thanks, Startup-Verband—we’re looking forward to meeting all the other visionary nominees at the #GSA25 awards ceremony in Berlin.

The first-ever Open Source Software for Fusion Energy (OSSFE) Conference kicked off this week with a focus on demos and collaborative discussions between researchers, developers, and organizations who are pushing the boundaries of fusion innovation to accelerate breakthroughs. Congratulations to Yiğit Günsür Elmacıoğlu, winner of the Proxima-sponsored #OSSFE2025 Best Student Contribution Prize for his contributions to DESC, a stellarator-focused software package we also use here at Proxima: https://lnkd.in/eR2grqxt #OpenSource projects like DESC and our own VMEC++ are transforming the fusion community, and Proxima is proud to be leading the charge toward greater openness and transparency—enabling the next generation of fusion researchers and developers to find innovative solutions along the way.

At Proxima, we envision a cleaner, brighter future powered by the stars. 🌟 We laid out our plan to achieve that vision in a new video from the American Physical Society, featuring interviews with CEO Francesco Sciortino, Chief Engineer Martin Kubie, Chief Scientist Jorrit Lion, Chief Manufacturing Officer Barrington D'Arcy, and Stellarator Optimization Engineer Nicolò Foppiani. 🎥 Check it out at the #APSSummit25 in Anaheim this week, or watch the full WebsEdge feature on YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gFiS3J2Q

It’s time for Europe’s deep tech companies to go big. Germany in particular has a wealth of research, design, and manufacturing expertise to draw from… and as Airbus and Warburg Pincus LLC Europe Chairman René Obermann told the Financial Times’ John Thornhill at Proxima’s lab opening event this week, “Innovation is best done by startups that can take risks.” We’re proud to be among Munich’s leading #deeptech startups, backed by a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem and a greatly supportive Bavarian government. Together, we can lead Europe to the forefront of a fusion-powered future. https://lnkd.in/e32vSNKM 

You’re looking at the future of fusion! Thanks to Florian Herrmann for joining us to celebrate the official opening of our Munich lab, where we’re taking the first steps on our journey toward building the world’s first commercial fusion power plant: Stellaris. It’s heartening to know that the Bavarian Government is supporting us on that journey. But this moment isn’t only about the ambitions of Proxima Fusion, or even the ambitions of Bavaria and Germany. It’s about the ambitions of all of Europe. We hosted over 150 friends, partners, and investors in the lab for an evening of celebration and inspiration, culminating in a panel discussion on how to build €1 trillion companies in Europe – moderated by Isabelle Körner and featuring Chairman of Airbus and Chairman of Warburg Pincus LLC Europe René Obermann, Helsing Co-Founder and Co-CEO Torsten Reil, and Technical University of Munich Professor Ann-Kristin Achleitner alongside Proxima CEO Francesco Sciortino. As Francesco said onstage last night: “Today, Europe needs abundant clean energy; it needs energy security; it needs resilience and grid balance; but it also needs lighthouse projects. We need to remind Europe that we can build stellarators and other things that truly matter. We choose to climb the highest mountain… and prove to the world that Europe intends to lead in a new era of fusion power.” That era starts here, in Munich.

Our First Episode is up: PROXIMA FUSION – Europe's Most Ambitious Startup 🇪🇺✨ Teaser attached. Full Video on Youtube to have the algorithm there pick it up. Every industry in the world will be redefined once we reach energy abundance – there is one company in Europe hell bent to make that happen as soon as possible. I went to visit them in their office and their lab – and I am taking you, with my camera, along. Let's make this series together: Let me know what you like? – what you don't? – what can i do better? – and who I should interview next! 🔥

𝐄𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐟𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐩𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫 In yesterday’s interview with Tom Mackenzie of Bloomberg Daybreak Europe I highlighted the opportunity for Europe in fusion and the key milestone that Proxima Fusion and its partners have now reached with Stellaris. ✔️ The Stellaris publication (https://lnkd.in/dtQq-V3q) is anything but hype or sensation: it is an extensive peer-reviewed paper displaying the world’s first coherent fusion power plant concept that can operate continuously and reliably, thanks to the QI-HTS stellarator concept. ✔️ Europe is at the forefront of the fusion race, standing on the shoulders of decades of public research, and thanks to leading institutions such as the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics , which we are fortunate to work with. ✔️ The W7-X experiment in Germany is a truly visionary prototype of what a QI stellarator power plant will look like. Now, Stellaris tells us that the vision of W7-X’s ideators can be extended to include all systems needed for a power plant. Next, we need to build an HTS stellarator model coil (2027) and a net-energy steady-state demo stellarator (Alpha, 2031). The journey is neither quick, nor easy, nor cheap … moonshots never are. But, as Europeans, it’s time to roll up our sleeves and take our spot in the fusion race. 👉 Read yesterday’s press release (https://lnkd.in/dyy6F_23) and reports from the The Wall Street Journal (https://lnkd.in/dtHhHKaR) and TechCrunch (https://lnkd.in/dpxK6xjJ). 👉 Find the full Bloomberg interview here: https://lnkd.in/dFNkfnQp

Stellaris is to stellarators what ARC has been to tokamaks. For his piece in today's The Wall Street Journal, Yusuf Khan interviewed Dennis Whyte, professor at the Plasma Science and Fusion Center at MIT - a key figure of the field who inspired me and my co-founder Lucio M. Milanese during our PhDs at MIT. "Whyte said the paper published on Wednesday marks the biggest development in fusion technology since the tokamaks breakthrough a decade ago, when a team from MIT showed for the first time how a commercial fusion plant could be built." Congrats to the Proxima Fusion team led by my co-founder Jorrit Lion and to all our partners at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, without whom this work would have not been possible. The entire Proxima team is especially grateful to Per Helander, Frank Jenko, Gabriel Plunk, Alan Goodman, Bob Davies, Michael Drevlak, Joachim Geiger, Sophia Henneberg, Heinrich Laqua, Alejandro Bañón Navarro, Alessandro Di Siena, Torsten Stange, Felix Wilms, Pavlos Xanthopoulos. Many thanks also to Francisco A. Hernández González and John Jelonnek of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Rogerio Jorge of University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Eduardo Neto of Instituto Superior Técnico. Read about Stellaris in today's WSJ: https://lnkd.in/dtHhHKaR