Google is backing European fusion energy in a record €411 million round for Munich-based Proxima Fusion—while American policymakers offer no matching commitment to build energy independence at home.
The round, the largest private fusion deal in European history, values Proxima at roughly €2.4 billion. Quantitative trading firms XTX Ventures and East X Ventures led the financing, with Google and German utility RWE joining as strategic investors, according to TNW. RWE committed about €25 million and is preparing a decommissioned fission reactor site in Bavaria for Proxima's first commercial plant. Google's specific stake was not disclosed.
Here's what matters for working Americans: this isn't just private capital at work. Bavaria committed €400 million in public funds to Proxima's roadmap. The startup has collected roughly €95 million in public grants in under three years, TNW reported. European governments are putting real money behind energy infrastructure. Ours aren't.
Proxima CEO Francesco Sciortino called the financing proof that Europe can "not only invent breakthrough technologies, but also build globally competitive companies around them," per CNBC. That's not just CEO spin. It's a description of industrial policy that works—private capital meets public commitment, and things get built.
CNBC noted that U.S. fusion companies have actually raised more private capital: Commonwealth Fusion Systems at $2.9 billion total, Helion Energy at $1.5 billion. Google is already an investor in CFS and signed a power purchase agreement with the company in June 2025. So Google isn't abandoning America—it's hedging across continents. The question is why only one continent is matching that private capital with serious public investment.
Proxima targets a net-energy demonstrator in the early 2030s and a commercial stellarator plant later that decade. Fusion has never produced commercial power. Google itself acknowledged that commercializing the tech is "immensely challenging, and success is not guaranteed," per CNBC. The dates may slide. The physics may fail. But the industrial base is being assembled in Germany: more than 50 partners in Proxima's Alpha Alliance, a utility providing real estate, a state government writing nine-figure checks.
Benzinga reported that Google also partnered with Elementl Power in May 2025 to develop three sites for advanced reactors—another sign that Big Tech sees energy supply as a strategic constraint and is willing to invest wherever governments allow it.
Follow the money. American private capital is flowing to fusion on both sides of the Atlantic. European governments are matching it. Washington isn't. When the plants get built—if they get built—the countries that matched the capital will be the ones that get the power.
