Proxima Fusion: The stellarator's industrial edge

The stellarator's industrial edge

Proxima Fusion, the first spin-out from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, is commercialising magnetic confinement fusion using quasi-isodynamic stellarator configurations that eliminate the plasma disruptions inherent to tokamaks.

In July 2026 it closed a €411 million round at a €2.4 billion valuation, led by XTX Ventures and East X Ventures with RWE and Google as strategic investors and the EIC Fund returning, taking total capital past €650 million in under three years and making it Europe's best-funded fusion company. The round matched Bavaria's €400 million public commitment, announced four months earlier. Next milestones are the Stellarator Model Coil in 2027 and the Alpha net-energy demonstrator in 2031, ahead of the Stellaris plant at the former Gundremmingen nuclear site.

Our mandate

Zaz Ventures secured the public capital that de-risked Proxima's magnet technology before private markets would fund it at scale. We secured the EIC Accelerator Grant received in 2024 (€2.5 million) and the EIC Accelerator Equity received in 2026 (€15 million). This financed high-temperature superconducting magnet assemblies and the optimisation models underpinning the quasi-isodynamic configuration — the validation that anchored the €411 million round.