Proxima Fusion to build €140 million HTS tape factory in Germany

Germany-based Proxima Fusion is investing €140 million ($162.6 million) to build a dedicated factory for high-temperature superconducting (HTS) tape. The move secures a domestic supply of the critical material required to generate the intense magnetic fields that contain plasma in the company's stellarator reactor design.

The facility will be funded through private capital and €21 million in public funding from the state of Lower Saxony. The scale of the requirement is immense: Proxima Fusion estimates its demonstration plant will require 20,000 kilometers of HTS tape, while a full-scale commercial power plant will need approximately 40,000 kilometers. This industrial push follows a recent €411 million funding round for the startup, which included strategic investments from Google (Alphabet) and the German energy giant RWE.

The Superconductor Bottleneck

Proxima Fusion is a spin-out from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, where it focuses on commercializing a next-generation stellarator based on the Wendelstein 7-X project. HTS tape is foundational to this approach because it allows for significantly stronger magnetic fields at higher temperatures than traditional superconductors. According to Lucio Milanese, Co-Founder and COO of Proxima Fusion, HTS technology "dramatically increases our design space by enabling higher magnetic fields compared to any other material available."

Currently, the global supply chain for this material is highly concentrated, with the vast majority of HTS tape production located in China and Japan. For Western fusion startups, this concentration creates a precarious dependency on a limited number of Asian suppliers for a component that is essentially the linchpin of the entire reactor architecture.

Strategic Implications

By establishing its own production capacity, Proxima Fusion is attempting to mitigate the geopolitical and operational risks associated with this monopoly. Because prototypes and commercial plants require thousands—and potentially hundreds of thousands—of kilometers of tape, any supply chain disruption in Asia could derail fusion energy timelines across the West.

Securing a domestic pipeline not only protects Proxima Fusion's own development schedule but also signals a broader shift toward vertical integration in the fusion industry. As companies move from theoretical designs to physical demonstration plants, the ability to manufacture specialized components in-house becomes a competitive necessity rather than a luxury.

Future Outlook

While the factory addresses the material supply, the broader challenge remains the scaling of the stellarator design for commercial power generation. Industry observers will be watching to see if this domestic production capacity can meet the rigorous quality and volume demands of a commercial plant. While the company has secured the capital and the public backing to begin construction, the long-term success of the venture depends on whether this localized supply chain can keep pace with the aggressive timelines of the global fusion race.