Munich-based stellarator fusion company Proxima Fusion has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in Japan with Kyoto Fusioneering, a Japanese fusion technology provider. The signing took place during Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s visit to Japan.
The Agreement
The MoU aims to strengthen the industrial supply chain behind Germany’s ambition to become a global leader in fusion energy, through cooperation on critical technologies for building and operating commercial fusion power plants. Under it, the two companies will continue and expand joint work on:
- Next-generation gyrotrons for plasma heating
- Fuel cycle technologies
Kyoto Fusioneering will also contribute its technologies and engineering expertise to the commercialisation and industrial deployment of fusion in Germany, including within the Fusion Hubs initiative of Germany’s Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR).
The German federal government has set the goal of building the world’s first fusion power plant in Germany. That depends on secure, industrial-scale supply chains for components that often don’t yet exist at scale anywhere. Proxima already has supply-chain partnerships, including for high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets, and the Kyoto Fusioneering deal adds the systems that heat and fuel the plasma.
Dr. Francesco Sciortino, co-founder and CEO of Proxima Fusion, said: “The global race to fusion will be won in factories and supply chains. Japan has spent decades building world-class fusion engineering capabilities; Germany has the leading stellarator engineering in the world and knows how to industrialise. In working closely with Kyoto Fusioneering and Fujikura, we are building a new industry together, one that makes both our countries more secure.”
Kiyoshi Seko, Representative Director, President and COO of Kyoto Fusioneering, said: “Germany is approaching fusion not only as a future source of energy, but as a pillar of its High-Tech Agenda to build national prosperity through advanced technology. Manufacturing and engineering are at the heart of that vision, and they are also at the heart of what Kyoto Fusioneering does. Through our cooperation with Proxima Fusion, we will bring our state of the art plasma heating technologies to one of the most ambitious stellarator programmes in the world, and help turn fusion into a real industry in Germany.”
The Companies
Founded in 2023 as a spin-out from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, Proxima Fusion is developing commercial fusion power plants based on its QI-HTS stellarator concept. Its roadmap runs through Alpha, a net-energy demonstrator targeted for the early 2030s, to Stellaris, which it describes as the world’s first commercial stellarator fusion power plant, later that decade.
Kyoto Fusioneering develops technologies and engineering services for plasma heating, the tritium fuel cycle, and tritium breeding blanket and thermal cycle systems, which are used in advanced fusion programmes whatever the confinement approach.
Proxima’s Funding Path
EU-Startups has followed Proxima since its €7 million pre-Seed in 2023, a €20 million Seed in 2024 and a €130 million Series A in June 2025, extended by €15 million that September. In July 2026 it secured another €411 million, bringing its reported funding and public grants to more than €650 million and supporting development of Alpha.
Other European fusion players include Munich-based Marvel Fusion (€50 million Series B extension in 2025) and Bristol-based Astral Systems (€26 million Series A in 2026, focused on medical isotopes). Together with Proxima’s latest round, EU-Startups counts €487 million invested across 2025–2026.
