Empirical Ventures has backed Proxima Fusion, Europe's leading stellarator fusion company and the first spin-out from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Munich.
Proxima is building fusion power plants based on quasi-isodynamic (QI) stellarators paired with high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets. Unlike tokamaks, QI stellarators offer the inherent stability suited to steady-state, always-on power generation.
The company builds on decades of European public research, with a team drawn from the Max Planck IPP, MIT, SpaceX, Tesla and McLaren, and is now moving from design into manufacturing and hardware.
“Europe needs firm, clean, sovereign power. Proxima is one of the most credible routes to it we've come across,” said the Empirical Ventures team.
The opportunity was sourced through Dr Ben Miles' science platform, which reaches a global audience of more than three million people fascinated by exactly this kind of breakthrough, an example of how Empirical's media reach turns directly into deal flow.
