Proxima raises €411M as Google backs fusion power
Proxima Fusion’s €411M round links Europe’s fusion ambitions with the rising power demands of AI infrastructure and strategic energy investment.
The AI power race is pulling frontier energy technologies closer to the centre of venture and strategic investment.
What happened
Munich-based Proxima Fusion raised €411M at a stated €2.4B valuation. The round was led by XTX Ventures and East X Ventures, with strategic participation from Google and RWE.
The company is developing a stellarator-based fusion programme and plans to use the capital to advance its engineering roadmap toward a demonstration plant.
Why it matters
This is one of the clearest examples yet of AI-era power demand feeding directly into frontier energy investment.
Hyperscalers increasingly need credible long-term sources of abundant, low-carbon electricity. Fusion remains technically difficult and commercially unproven, but strategic investors are looking further ahead because grid constraints are already affecting data-centre expansion today.
For Europe, the round also matters as a deeptech financing signal. Fusion companies require unusually large amounts of patient capital, specialised engineering talent and long development timelines.
The bigger picture
The AI infrastructure race is becoming an energy race.
As compute demand rises, investors are backing a wider range of power technologies, from nuclear and geothermal to storage and fusion. Proxima’s round shows how energy scarcity is turning once-distant scientific bets into strategic infrastructure stories.