European nuclear fusion company Proxima Fusion has raised €411 million ($469.9m) in its latest financing round, with backing from Google as a strategic investor.

The financing round also included German energy giant RWE and was led by XTX Ventures and East X Ventures. Following this, the company is now valued at €2.4 billion ($2.74bn).

According to the company, the financing will support the construction of its demonstration project, dubbed Alpha, in Munich, Germany. The net-energy fusion demonstrator is expected to come online in the early 2030s and act as a proof of concept for commercial deployments.

“Europe is racing with the United States and China to get to the first fusion power plant. Proxima’s financing demonstrates that Europe can not only invent breakthrough technologies, but also build globally competitive companies around them. Investors recognize both the urgency and the opportunity of what we’re doing and are backing us to develop a generational energy technology company,” said Dr. Francesco Sciortino, co-founder and CEO of Proxima Fusion.

In addition to the demonstrator, the company said it will use the proceeds of the financing to expand production of high-temperature superconducting cables and magnets and to support the development of the engineering and manufacturing systems required for stellarators.

Headquartered in Munich, with offices in Zurich and Oxford. It was spun out of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Munich in 2023.

Unlike nuclear fission – the reaction utilized in traditional nuclear power plants – which involves the splitting of heavy nuclei to generate energy, nuclear fusion reverses the process by combining light nuclei into a heavier one. If successfully commercialized, fusion has the potential to provide an almost limitless source of energy.

However, significant barriers remain, including high upfront costs, risk of heat damage, and plasma confinement. As a result, doubts remain about whether fusion can be successfully commercialized in the near term, with most projections beyond the 2040s.

The company is not the first fusion firm to be backed by Google. Last July, the company signed a long-term Power Purchase Agreement with US fusion firm Commonwealth Fusion Systems for 200MW of power expected to be delivered sometime in the 2030s.

Google has also backed fusion developer TAE Technologies, which recently raised more than $150m in its latest funding round.