Why it matters
Proxima Fusion is the first spin-out from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics. It is trying to turn that institute's Wendelstein 7-X stellarator work into a power plant that uses a quasi-isodynamic design and high-temperature superconducting magnets. On 7 July 2026 it raised €411 million ($468 million) at a €2.4 billion ($2.7 billion) valuation. XTX Ventures and East X Ventures led, and RWE and Google joined as strategic investors. The company said the round took total funding past €650 million, including €95 million of public grants, and that it had exceeded its target of matching Bavaria's €400 million public-funding commitment.
The about page, read on 13 November 2026, describes a team of more than 200 and funding of approximately €650 million. The July release said around 200 people, in Munich with offices in Zurich and Oxford. The about page also lists a magnet lab at the Paul Scherrer Institute and an office on the UK's Culham campus. Those pages describe a financed team and future machines, not an operating power plant.
Who is building it
The about page dates the spin-out to 2023. Five co-founders are still named in operating roles: Francesco Sciortino as chief executive, Lucio Milanese as chief external affairs officer, Jorrit Lion as chief scientist, Martin Kubie as chief engineer, and Jonathan Schilling as head of assembly. Sergei Galperin is chief financial officer. Lion is responsible for the Alpha design.
The 26 February 2025 Stellaris announcement, still on the site, calls Proxima the institute's first spin-out and says Wendelstein 7-X was funded with more than €1.3 billion from the German federal government and the European Union. It presents Stellaris as a peer-reviewed concept in Fusion Engineering and Design, and as the first quasi-isodynamic stellarator power-plant design that the company says meets the major physics and engineering constraints together.
Model coil, Alpha and Stellaris
The about page's current timeline puts completion of the Stellarator Model Coil, and of the Alpha design, in 2027. It puts Alpha, the demonstrator meant to show net energy gain in a stellarator for the first time, in the early 2030s. It puts Stellaris, the plant meant to put fusion electricity on the grid, in the 2030s. Alpha is placed in Garching. Magnet manufacturing and Stellaris are described as plans at RWE's Gundremmingen site, the former nuclear station named in the July release.
The July 2026 release uses the same early-2030s window for Alpha, with Stellaris later that decade. Francesco Sciortino told CNBC on 7 November 2026 that the company is aiming for net energy gain during the early 2030s. The February 2025 announcement has not been revised. It still says the model coil comes in 2027 and that Alpha will show net energy in 2031, with grid power aimed at the 2030s. The coil year matches. The Alpha year does not.
Superconducting tape
On 9 September 2026 Proxima and Lower Saxony signed a memorandum to lay foundations for a fusion-grade high-temperature superconducting tape plant. About €140 million is planned for the first two phases through the end of 2029, split equally between private capital and public funding. Lower Saxony's stated share is €21 million, just under 30 percent of the proposed public contribution. The memorandum covers site assessments and names no town. The plan then was about 20,000 kilometres of tape for Alpha and a further 40,000 kilometres for Stellaris. The release says industrial-scale tape is made primarily in Asia and that talks with technology partners were underway.
On 7 November 2026 CNBC reported two Tokyo memoranda signed on 28 October, with Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi present. Fujikura's covers tape. Kyoto Fusioneering's expands work on gyrotrons, the microwave sources used to heat plasma. Sciortino told CNBC that Proxima was still studying a Lower Saxony factory and hoped to make around 5,000 kilometres of tape a year by 2030. CNBC wrote that the €140 million facility would be financed partly from the July round. That financing line is the article's, beside his statement of a hope. A 5,000-kilometre annual rate is not the 20,000 kilometres planned for Alpha, and neither page says a purchase order has been signed.
Competition
Sciortino told CNBC he remains confident Proxima will be the first company to turn on a pilot plant, and that the commercial test is whether that plant is simple to operate. The same article sets the claim against Commonwealth Fusion Systems, also backed by Google, Helion, General Fusion, China Fusion Energy Co., and Japan's Helical Fusion. Proxima's July release and about page still describe Alpha and Stellaris as future machines. The July release says the Alpha Alliance includes more than 50 industrial partners. The about page also counts public research institutions in that group.
What to watch
The near-term milestone that the about page and the February 2025 announcement share is the Stellarator Model Coil in 2027. The open date is Alpha: 2031 on that unretracted announcement, and the early 2030s on the about page, the July 2026 release, and Sciortino's November comment. The tape plant is still a memorandum and a study. No town has been named, and the hoped-for annual output is not a signed production commitment.