Google has backed Germany-based Proxima Fusion, which is looking to build Europe’s first commercial fusion power plant, in a 411 million euros ($468 million) round, the company announced on Tuesday.
Nuclear fusion is the process of combining two hydrogen atoms to form one helium atom, releasing huge amounts of energy.
While it promises an abundance of energy, the technology has not been deployed commercially, with the industry racing to overcome technical challenges. All current nuclear power plants use fission, which involves splitting atoms.
Google’s investment underscores its continued interest in fusion as a potential source of abundant, carbon-free, firm energy over the long-term, Proxima, which hit a $2.7 billion valuation, said.
The round was led by XTX Ventures and East X Ventures, with RWE and Google as strategic investors. Other venture capital firms including Plural, UVC Partners, Balderton and Cherry Ventures also participated.
“Europe is racing with the United States and China to get to the first fusion power plant,” Francesco Sciortino, cofounder and CEO, said in a statement.
“Proxima’s financing demonstrates that Europe can not only invent breakthrough technologies, but also build globally competitive companies around them,” he added.
“Investors recognise both the urgency and the opportunity of what we’re doing and are backing us to develop a generational energy technology company.”
What is stellarator fusion technology?
Proxima is developing stellarator technology, one of a handful of approaches to fusion, and hopes to have its fusion demonstrator — a proof-of-concept precursor to a commercial power plant — up and running in the early 2030s.
The commercial power plant is targeted for later that decade, the company said.
Proxima said the funding would help it expand high-temperature superconducting (HTS) cable and magnet production, as well as develop engineering and manufacturing systems required for stellarators.
Proxima will be hiring across engineering, manufacturing and operations to accelerate progress, it said.
How Proxima compares with U.S. fusion startups
While Proxima is the best-funded fusion startup in Europe by some distance, U.S. companies working on the technology have raised significantly more.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) picked up $863 million in August, to take its total funding to $2.9 billion, according to Dealroom. Sam Altman-backed Helion Energy raised $465 million last month, with total funding sitting at $1.5 billion.
Google is also an investor in CFS and signed an offtake agreement in June 2025 with the company once its first commercial plant is live.
“Fusion holds huge potential as an energy source of the future: it’s clean, abundant and inherently safe, and it can be built just about anywhere,” the company said in a blog post at the time.
Highlighting the hurdles left to overcome with the technology, Google added that while fusion could change the world, commercializing the tech is “immensely challenging, and success is not guaranteed.”
