Proxima Fusion is moving to strengthen one of the most important building blocks in fusion energy: high-temperature superconducting tape. The Germany-based startup announced plans for a €140 million factory that will produce fusion-grade HTS tape, a material central to its reactor architecture.
The company said the project will be financed through a combination of public and private capital, including a €21 million contribution from Lower Saxony. The factory follows Proxima Fusion's recent €411 million funding round, which placed it among the most well-capitalized fusion startups in the sector.
HTS tape is used to create powerful magnetic fields that help confine plasma inside fusion reactors. Proxima Fusion expects its demonstration plant to require about 20,000 kilometers of the material, while a future commercial plant would need roughly twice that amount.
At present, most HTS tape production is concentrated in China and Japan, making supply chain capacity a strategic issue for emerging fusion companies. Beyond fusion, the same material is also attracting interest from other advanced infrastructure projects, including data centers seeking higher efficiency and power density.
As fusion research advances, investments in core materials like HTS tape could help shape a more scalable energy landscape for the decades ahead.
