Proxima Fusion is Europe’s fastest-growing fusion startup building the first generation of fusion power plants - the clearest, most robust path to putting fusion on the grid.

The Munich startup, spun out from Germany's Max Planck Society, uses powerful magnets in twisted, doughnut-shaped devices called stellarators to recreate the sun's fusion process on Earth. Unlike today's nuclear plants, there's no meltdown risk and the fuel is effectively hydrogen - the universe's most abundant element.

To be blunt, if they succeed, Proxima won't just build a company - they could solve a key challenge in the energy crisis.

This is exactly the world-changing technology we want to support on our mission to fund Europe's first trillion-dollar company.

In conversation with Filip Dames, Partner at Cherry Ventures, about investing in Proxima Fusion - Europe's most promising fusion startup.

Filip, let's start with the big picture. How did Proxima Fusion first come on Cherry's radar?

If you're serious about deeptech in Europe, you've heard of Proxima. They're one of the most innovative fusion companies globally, working on a breakthrough stellarator reactor design. For us, this was an opportunity to get behind something truly groundbreaking.

What caught our attention immediately was their approach to stellarators. Much of public fusion research is focused on tokamaks, reactors that use magnetic fields to confine heavy hydrogen plasma at 100+ million degrees - the temperature needed for fusion reactions in the lab.

Tokamaks rely on electric currents through the plasma to help shape confinement, but these currents can cause instabilities and sudden shutdowns. Proxima, however, is advancing stellarator reactors with twisted 3D magnetic coils that confine plasma using only external magnetic fields, eliminating plasma currents entirely - making them inherently stable for continuous operation, though requiring extraordinary engineering precision.

The engineering complexity is front-loaded in the design phase, but the operational simplicity is transformative. The scientific validation came in 2022 when Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP), built with €1.3 billion in public investments, achieved its key design targets. This proved that extreme manufacturing precision is achievable at the stellarator scale, and critically, that the theoretical physics matches experimental results.

That breakthrough removed major scientific risk from stellarator development. Further theoretical and numerical advances in 2022 proved that there are no “blockers” on the physics side to the development of stellarator power plants – it’s now an engineering and execution challenge.

Cherry is looking for founders tackling the biggest challenges, and with the total energy market approaching $10 trillion and fusion positioned to capture 20-30% of that, this represents both humanity's greatest challenge and largest commercial opportunity.

What made you confident this team could actually pull it off?

Francesco Sciortino, their CEO, has this rare combination that you almost never see in deeptech. He's worked on tokamaks for a decade, and then was amazed by the W7-X stellarator when he moved to the Max Planck - the most advanced stellarator on the planet – where some of his co-founders were doing research.

But critically, Francesco and his cofounders understand the commercial and engineering requirements needed to transition from research-grade devices to power plants that can compete with other energy sources.

This background has enabled them to attract exceptional talent across the entire spectrum needed for commercialisation. They've hired from SpaceX and Tesla for manufacturing and systems engineering, Google and MIT for superconductors and computational optimisation, McLaren F1 for precision engineering and materials science, as well as research talent with PhDs from Harvard and Stanford.

Plus, Proxima has already secured serious industry players like Pro-beam and MAN as strategic partners, Dr. Lutz Wegener (Head of Assembly for W7-X) and Dr. Felix Schauer (led cryogenics at W7-X) on the board and an ongoing relationship with Max Planck to access world-class research.

We believe Proxima has the best fusion team in Europe, if not globally.

Was there a specific moment in their pitch that made you think 'this is it'?

Cherry is committed to finding Europe's first trillion-dollar company. Fusion has to be in that conversation - The global energy sector, including oil, gas, coal, renewables, and utilities, represents about 6–8% of total world market cap. Fusion could fundamentally reshape this entire sector.

But what really sold us was seeing how they'd completely reimagined the development process. Instead of the traditional approach where one engineer builds something, tests it, waits months for results, then iterates, Proxima runs continuous design-test cycles per day using their StarFinder optimisation platform and AI-driven simulations.

They’re embedding AI throughout their workflows to explore parameter spaces that classical methods cannot reach. Their computational approach leverages decades of public fusion data combined with modern simulation tools in a single, powerful framework.

A greater velocity of learning and iteration is now possible, and the technological convergence of proven stellarator physics, high temperature superconducting magnets, and AI design convinced us they could actually make it work.

Why is now the right moment for fusion?

We're adding massive pressure to the grid: AI, data centers, quantum computing, everyone trying to electrify transportation - but we're not adding enough baseload capacity.

Renewables are intermittent by nature. We also need something that can run 24/7.

From a technology perspective, we're at a perfect confluence. The learnings from W7-X (the world's most advanced stellarator) have proven that stellarators can work. High-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets have matured dramatically - they can operate at much higher temperatures while generating stronger magnetic fields than conventional superconductors, allowing for smaller, more efficient reactor designs. Manufacturing techniques from the past decade now offer incredible tailwinds for fusion components.

Today, AI-driven simulations are unlocking possibilities we couldn't even imagine a few years ago. We are looking beyond what Proxima can do with today's AI - but about what they'll be able to do with AI three years from now, based on what they have already built so far.

Equally important are the political tailwinds. Post-Ukraine energy crises have created unprecedented commitment to energy independence. Proxima is positioned as a strategic asset in Germany’s €390M fusion initiative (2023-28), with Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Soder publicly championing fusion policy, and the new German Government led by Friedrich Merz eyeing fusion as a key lighthouse tech project for the country to be financed by new major research infrastructure spending.

This creates an environment where fusion can transition from research to reality.

What does the world look like if Proxima succeeds?

The prospect of solving the energy crisis would unlock human potential on a scale we can barely imagine. The cost of AI compute would drop dramatically. Every country could get energy independence, we could power carbon capture at scale, make hydrogen fuel economically viable, and run massive desalination plants. The geopolitical implications are staggering.

This represents a generational opportunity for Europe. We have the scientific foundation, industrial capacity, and political alignment to dominate commercial fusion. Unlike solar panels manufactured in Asia or critical battery materials controlled by single countries, European fusion creates a completely sovereign energy supply chain. Every component, from superconducting magnets to tritium breeding blankets, can be produced within the EU's industrial ecosystem.

Coalition contracts across EU member states are now embedding fusion as a cornerstone of European energy strategy. The German coalition government has made fusion a priority in their energy transition roadmap, France is allocating billions through their France 2030 plan, and the EU's Strategic Energy Technology Plan explicitly targets fusion commercialisation by 2040. This isn't research funding - it's a multi-decade political commitment treating fusion as critical infrastructure for European sovereignty.

This is why you get into venture capital.

How often do you get to back something that could truly change the trajectory of human civilisation?