German startup Proxima Fusion plans €140 million superconducting tape factory
The venture bets on local manufacturing to secure the critical fusion energy supply chain dominated by China and Japan.
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- German stellarator fusion startup Proxima Fusion announced plans to build a €140 million ($162.6 million) factory.
- The facility will manufacture high-temperature superconducting (HTS) tape, a critical component for its reactor design.
- The project is backed by €21 million in state funding from Lower Saxony to reduce reliance on Asian suppliers.
Proxima Fusion, the prominent German fusion energy startup founded by alumni of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, has announced a bold plan to build a €140 million ($162.6 million) manufacturing facility in Europe. The factory will be dedicated exclusively to producing high-temperature superconducting (HTS) tape, which is the most critical and expensive material required to construct the powerful magnetic coils of its stellarator fusion reactor. The initiative is backed by a €21 million state subsidy from the government of Lower Saxony, where the plant is scheduled to be constructed.
The move represents a strategic vertical integration aimed at securing Proxima Fusion's supply chain. HTS tape is currently a massive bottleneck for the global fusion industry, with commercial production heavily dominated by a handful of specialized suppliers in China and Japan. By establishing local, high-volume manufacturing, Proxima Fusion intends to insulate its development timeline from geopolitical tensions, export restrictions, and price volatility, while ensuring a reliable supply of the exact specifications required for its QI stellarator architecture.
Stellarators utilize complex, non-planar magnetic fields to confine high-temperature plasma, requiring HTS tape that can maintain superconductivity under extreme magnetic and thermal stress. Proxima Fusion's factory intends to pioneer advanced, highly automated deposition techniques to produce HTS tape with higher consistency and lower costs than current market offerings. If successful, the facility will not only secure Proxima's own commercialization path but also position Europe as a major exporter of high-temperature superconducting hardware for the broader global clean energy sector.
By manufacturing its own superconducting tape, Proxima Fusion is addressing the single largest physical supply constraint facing magnet-confined fusion energy today. If successful, local, high-volume HTS tape production can break the East Asian monopoly on superconducting materials, accelerating the timeline for deploying gigawatt-scale, zero-emission baseload power to feed the AI industry's exponential electricity demands.
Will Proxima Fusion's planned automated deposition techniques achieve the high yield rates and thermal tolerances required to build its commercial stellarator coils by 2030?
Still open. When the paper finds out, it will say so here and on the open questions page — including if it got this wrong.