Funding focus is a new series analysing cash flow into the European tech ecosystem. Last week, we looked at the largest investment rounds in the Netherlands, and now we’re honing in on Europe’s budding fusion energy sector. 

European fusion energy startups raised a record €290mn in the first half of this year as VCs bet big on a technology with the potential to supply virtually limitless clean power.

Funding in 2025 has already eclipsed 2024 levels — the previous record year — which saw fusion energy companies raise €185mn, according to Dealroom data.

Leading the pack this year was Munich-based Proxima Fusion. The company secured €130mn in Series A funding in June from big-name investors including Balderton Capital, Cherry Ventures, and Plural. The round marked Europe’s largest single investment in a fusion energy startup. 

Proxima, which was spun out of the prestigious Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in 2023, aims to commercialise a type of fusion machine known as a stellarator. Shaped like a twisted metal doughnut, the stellarator is far more complex to design than the more common tokamak — but if engineered correctly, it could provide a more stable and continuous source of fusion power.

The year’s second biggest cash injection went to another Munich-based company: Marvel Fusion. The company raised €113mn in a Series B funding round in March led by investors including EQT and Siemens Energy. 

Marvel is developing a type of laser-based fusion called inertial confinement. Instead of using big magnets or giant reactors like other fusion approaches, the method fires ultra-powerful lasers at tiny fuel pellets made of hydrogen. The lasers create extreme heat and pressure, causing the hydrogen atoms to fuse together and release energy — similar to how the sun works, but in short, controlled bursts. Last year, Marvel broke ground on a $150mn laser facility in Colorado.

Other significant funding rounds in Europe’s budding fusion energy sector this year went to France’s Renaissance Fusion, which raised €32mn for its stellarator design, and Sweden’s Novatron, which secured €10mn to build a unique type of fusion reactor it described to TNW as a “mirror machine.”

The record funding comes as Europe races to take the lead in the race to launch the first commercially viable fusion reactor, which the majority of industry experts believe will come online sometime in the 2030s.

Francesco Sciortino, co-founder and CEO of Proxima, believes fusion energy can complement wind and solar power and become a “decisive building block” for Europe’s energy security.

“Fusion holds the potential to fundamentally transform the way we think about energy, changing the world from a place that’s controlled by those with reserves of oil and gas, to one where technology lets countries control their own fate,” he previously told TNW.

Sciortino believes Europe has the potential to lead in the technology. However, funding for fusion on the continent still pales in comparison to the US. 

In the first half of this year, US-based fusion startups secured a combined $1.6bn (€1.3bn) in investment, over four times more than their European counterparts. Major rounds include a whopping $1bn Series B for Bill Gates-backed Commonwealth Fusion Systems and a $425mn investment into Helion Energy, which has won support from Sam Altman.