Europe Is Ready to Build Fusion: Why I Came Back

On 3 November, I spoke twice at the WinWin event in Brussels, on how Europe turns scientific breakthroughs into new industries. In the morning, I was the first company founder to address Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, in a presentation that opened the stage for European companies. In the afternoon, I joined a roundtable with Executive Vice-President Teresa Ribera.

Here is what I said.

Why I came back

Ten years ago, I left Europe. I pursued my PhD at MIT, then went to Beijing as a Schwarzman Scholar. I saw up close how America funds its bets and how fast China builds. And then I came back.

I came back because the world's most advanced stellarator, Wendelstein 7-X, is in Greifswald, Germany. Europe built it, and last year it set a world record for sustained performance. A stellarator is a fusion machine built to run steadily, exactly what a power plant needs. No one else in the world has a machine like it. What was missing was a company to turn the science of Wendelstein 7-X into commercial reality.

So in 2023, five of us from MIT, the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics and Google X founded Proxima Fusion.

What we are building

Today, we are more than 200 engineers and scientists. We have raised more than €650 million, overwhelmingly from private investors. They could have put their money anywhere, and they chose Europe.

Our demonstrator, Alpha, will be built in Bavaria in the early 2030s and show the production of net fusion power. We have also identified the site for the first fusion power plant: Gundremmingen, a former fission plant belonging to our partner and investor, the utility company RWE.

The cooling towers came down last year. The grid connection is still there, waiting for us. When our plant runs, this grid will bring fusion power to homes and factories. And Europe can repeat that at sites across the continent, for clean, abundant, sovereign power.

Why Europe's industry needs firm, clean power

In the afternoon, I made the case for why this matters for industry. Looking towards 2040, Europe's industry will need more of something it already struggles to get: clean power that runs day and night, at a predictable price, close to where industrial value is generated. Steel, chemicals, data centers and chip fabs all depend on it.

Wind, solar, storage and grids need to scale up this decade to compete. Fusion is the answer for the decade after. It gives Europe a firm, zero-carbon baseload that complements renewables and can reuse existing grid connections. Our first site for a commercial power plant, in the late 2030s, is Gundremmingen, a former nuclear power station.

Fusion is already an industry

Fusion also means industry, and it is an industry today. Our Alpha Alliance brings together more than 50 European companies across seven countries, many of which built ITER and Wendelstein 7-X.

It also means building the supply chain here. Today, more than 90% of the superconducting tape at the heart of next-generation fusion magnets is made in China and Japan. Our goal is the mirror image: more than 90% of all of our critical supply chain in Europe. Together with the government of Lower Saxony, we are setting up Europe's first large-scale factory for fusion-grade superconducting tape, a €140 million investment.

Alpha is where our superconducting magnets move from prototype to series production. The same capability goes into sharper MRI scanners, superconducting grid cables, large-scale electric engines and lighter generators for offshore wind. Fusion power reaches the grid from the second half of the 2030s. The industrial return from building it starts now.

Hold on to the lead Europe already has

So what does Europe need to do? First, hold on to the industry it already has. Europe built the modern solar market and then watched the manufacturing move to Asia. With fusion, Europe starts from the other end. Magnets, cryogenics and precision engineering already sit in European companies. That lead won't last by itself, because the US and China are building fast.

The IPCEI on innovative nuclear technologies is a good step in the right direction. It brings research, start-ups and industry together across borders around fusion and its value chains, which is exactly where Europe's strength lies.

What I asked for

Proxima can be the proof that Europe can go from a Max Planck laboratory to a power plant in one generation, competing head to head with the United States and China. My ask is acceleration, consolidated in one Fusion Act: one clear pathway for first-of-a-kind fusion plants, from the IPCEI and the Fusion Strategy through first deployment and ultimately commercial scale, so the support lasts as long as it takes to build them and reaches European industry. Projects like ours run on decade-long timelines. When the next step is uncertain, investors wait. In this race, waiting costs Europe its lead.

Two steps would get us there.

Number One: make fusion a European moonshot, and make Europe a core anchor customer of its own fusion pilot plant. Industry builds it and runs it. Nowhere in the world is a first-of-a-kind power plant built on private money alone.

Number Two: create a clear European regulatory framework tailored to fusion, with an accelerated permitting track. Fusion has no chain reaction and no long-lived high-level waste. It may be one of the cheapest growth policies you will ever sign.

Do that, and by 2040 Europe will be running the first fusion power plants, built by its own supply chain. With your support, we can make fusion, as a sovereign, clean and industry-enabling energy source, a reality in Europe for ourselves and for future generations.