Hidden Champion #7 – Proxima Fusion

There is a phrase that has accompanied the history of progress: “That’s impossible.”
If we had accepted this phrase, there would be no airplanes, no steel ships, and no moon landing. Each of these “certainties” was disproved by new materials, better tools, and clever engineers.
We’ve heard a modern version of this phrase often in recent years: “Economically viable nuclear fusion? That’s impossible.” Proxima Fusion aims to prove that this “certainty” doesn’t hold up either.

Nuclear fusion promises virtually unlimited, low-carbon energy. The physics are well understood. The real challenge lies in sustainably controlling a plasma heated to over 100 million degrees.
While many developers are focusing on tokamaks, the Munich-based startup—spun off from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in 2023—has chosen the more challenging path: the quasi-isodynamic stellarator. This design is more difficult to engineer and build, but it is more stable and easier to operate in a power plant setting.
CEO Francesco Sciortino sums it up:
“Objectively speaking, a stellarator is very difficult to design and very difficult to build. But once you succeed, it’s a simple machine—just like a microwave oven.”

For a long time, the stellarator was considered too complex. Only now are the key components coming together:

• Enormous computing power for complex simulations
• AI-Based Optimization of Magnetic Fields
• Decades of Findings from the German Research Reactor Wendelstein 7-X
• Modern high-temperature superconductors such as YBCO tapes

These YBCO tapes, made of yttrium-barium-copper oxide, conduct electricity with virtually no loss and enable magnetic fields that would be nearly impossible to achieve with conventional materials. Major technological breakthroughs often don’t begin in the reactor, but with the materials themselves.

Proxima Fusion builds directly on the findings from Wendelstein 7-X, the world’s most advanced stellarator. The roadmap is set:

• Alpha: The demonstration reactor is intended to prove that it generates more energy than it consumes during operation.
• Stellaris: This is set to become the first commercial fusion power plant.

The Free State of Bavaria is supporting the project with a pledged 400 million euros.

A stellarator is more difficult to build than a tokamak. That is precisely why we should have confidence in German engineering to build it. After all, if it were easy, everyone would do it.