Proxima Fusion Enlists Japan's Fujikura and Kyoto Fusioneering in the Race to Build a Power Plant

Proxima Fusion inked memoranda of understanding with two Japanese industrial partners — Fujikura and Kyoto Fusioneering — at a signing in Tokyo on Oct. 28. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, in Japan to deepen trade ties, both looked on. The Munich-based company is chasing the same prize as a pack of rivals: the world's first commercial fusion power plant.

Fusion mimics the sun, smashing light atomic nuclei together inside super-heated plasma to release enormous energy. Two main routes dominate the field — high-powered lasers, or powerful magnets that trap the plasma. Proxima is betting on a magnetic device called a stellarator, built to hold plasma steady for long stretches.

The Kyoto Fusioneering pact expands existing work on next-generation gyrotrons, the devices that fire high-power microwaves to heat plasma. The Fujikura deal goes further: the pair will explore industrial-scale manufacturing in Germany of high-temperature superconducting tape, a metallic tape that carries current with almost no resistive losses. Wound into coils, that tape becomes the magnets that confine and control the plasma.

CEO Francesco Sciortino told CNBC that Fujikura, a 141-year-old firm with more than 50,000 employees worldwide, built its name in optical fibers and now leads in high-temperature superconductors. He said the company sees the tape as potentially the next optical fiber. Proxima is weighing a plant in Lower Saxony that would turn out roughly 5,000 kilometers of tape a year by 2030.

The 140 million euro ($160 million) facility would lean partly on proceeds from a $468 million funding round in July, which valued Proxima at $2.7 billion. Google parent Alphabet is among its backers. Sciortino said the company expects to need about 20,000 kilometers of tape for its Alpha demonstrator and another 40,000 kilometers for its planned Stellaris power station.

Ann Mettler, president of Brussels clean-energy think tank Catalyse Europe and a former Breakthrough Energy vice president, told CNBC that Europe has historically fumbled the leap from scientific leadership to industrial payoff. Speaking in a personal capacity, she called fusion a strategic imperative for a resource-poor continent that depends heavily on China, and a silver bullet if the promise of abundant, clean, limitless energy holds. Building the supply chain first, she said, is what decides who wins — and that work starts years before any switch gets thrown. Sciortino says he's confident Proxima flips on a pilot plant first, targeting net energy gain in the early 2030s. Standing in the way: Google-backed Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Helion Energy, Canada's General Fusion, state-backed China Fusion Energy Co. and Tokyo's Helical Fusion.