Proxima Fusion plans to build €140M superconducting tape factory

Proxima Fusion is betting on a critical ingredient for its fusion reactors: superconducting tape.

The German fusion startup said Wednesday it plans to build a €140 million ($162.6 million) factory to produce fusion-grade high-temperature superconducting (HTS) tape, a key component of its reactor design.

The move comes months after Proxima raised €411 million in a round that catapulted the company up the ranks of the best-funded fusion startups. Proxima plans to use a mix of public and private funding to complete the factory, with the state of Lower Saxony contributing €21 million.

Proxima will use HTS tape to generate the powerful magnetic fields needed to contain the plasma required to spark fusion reactions. Its demonstration plant will use 20,000 kilometers of HTS tape, while its planned commercial power plant will need twice as much. Today, the vast majority of HTS tape is manufactured in China and Japan.

HTS tape emerged a little over a decade ago as one of the fundamental breakthroughs that enabled the current generation of fusion power startups. Because it can generate strong magnetic fields at relatively high temperatures, HTS tape allows for smaller, more efficient reactor designs.

While fusion power is expected to consume a large portion of the world’s HTS tape production, other companies, like Veir, are using the material to boost the efficiency and power density of data centers.

Why it matters

Proxima’s factory bet signals that fusion startups increasingly see supply-chain control over specialized inputs like HTS tape — not just reactor physics — as the bottleneck standing between demonstration plants and commercial power, with data-center demand from companies like Veir adding a second buyer competing for the same material.