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Google and RWE Back Proxima Fusion at $2.7B to Build Europe's First Commercial Fusion Plant · Minds, Bodies, and Terawatts

• 0:00
  [Host] This is Minds, Bodies, and Terawatts, where we watch the money follow the electrons. Reuters reported on July 7th that Google and the German utility RWE just backed Proxima Fusion, a Munich startup building a fusion reactor, at a two point seven billion dollar valuation.
• 0:17
  [Guest] The round was 411 million euros, about 468 million dollars, led by two venture firms with Google and RWE joining. That makes Proxima the best-financed fusion company in Europe. It's only three years old.
• 0:30
  [Host] Three years old and already worth almost three billion. What have they actually built?
• 0:35
  [Guest] Not a power plant yet. They're a 2023 spinout from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, building a stellarator, a reactor that uses twisted magnets to hold superheated gas still long enough for atoms to fuse.
• 0:49
  [Host] So what did Google see that's worth that check?
• 0:53
  [Guest] The plan has an address. Proxima wants the plant at Gundremmingen, a retired nuclear fission site in Bavaria, with a working demonstrator in the early 2030s. Reusing a decommissioned nuclear town means the grid connections and cooling water are already there.
• 1:09
  [Host] And RWE is a power company, not a tech investor. Why is a utility in on this?
• 1:15
  [Guest] Because RWE sells electricity, and it's watching demand run away from supply. Twenty-five million euros into an unproven reactor is a hedge that fusion is the baseload it'll need to sell in fifteen years.
• 1:28
  [Host] A three-year-old with no reactor at that valuation still sounds like hype to me. Why isn't it?
• 1:35
  [Guest] Because the tell isn't the science, it's who signs. When Google's lawyers, who have lawyers, and a century-old utility both write real checks, that's due diligence pointing at confidence, not a press release.
• 1:47
  [Host] But Google's already backed American fusion. Why cross the ocean for a German one?
• 1:53
  [Guest] Sovereignty. CEO Francesco Sciortino told Bloomberg the company should feel like a European treasure, and his pitch is blunt. Whoever lights the first plant owns cheap, always-on power, and nobody wants to import that from a rival.
• 2:07
  [Host] Here's what nags me. We keep hearing how much power AI data centers burn right now. Fusion in the 2030s doesn't help this decade.
• 2:16
  [Guest] That's the real gap. The demand is here today and the supply is a decade out, so between now and then it's gas turbines and old nuclear filling in. The check announces intent, it doesn't turn on a light bulb.
• 2:31
  [Host] So what makes this different from fusion being thirty years away my whole life?
• 2:37
  [Guest] The physics crossed over. Labs have pulled more energy out than they put in, repeatedly. What's left is engineering and money, and the money just showed up with an address and a deadline.
• 2:50
  [Host] And if Proxima slips? Bavaria's left with a half-built reactor and a big bill.
• 2:55
  [Guest] Some of these bets will fail, that's priced in. But the ones chasing it are utilities and hyperscalers doing math on their own energy costs, not dreamers. When the buyer of the power is also the funder, the incentive is brutally aligned.
• 3:11
  [Host] So the race isn't really about physics anymore.
• 3:14
  [Guest] It's about who pours the concrete first, a nation-sized bet on cheap, always-on power for the thinking machines and the robots without cooking the planet.
• 3:24
  [Host] Patrick Deglon calls fusion the fuel of the new civilization, the brain, the body, and the fuel, which is more or less the name of this show.
• 3:34
  [Guest] For more on the fusion race and the economics behind it, head to unscarcity dot ai. The book is on Amazon, the audiobook is on Spotify. This has been Minds, Bodies, and Terawatts.