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Fusion energy start-up Marvel Fusion has raised €113mn in new funding as Germany steps up its efforts to compete in the global race to create zero-carbon power by combining atoms.
The Munich-based company has completed a series B funding round with investment from the venture arm of Swedish private equity group EQT, Siemens Energy and the European Innovation Council, according to its founder Moritz von der Linden.
The new funding for Marvel’s laser-based technology is one of the largest investments to date in Europe’s nascent fusion industry as the region races to keep pace with the US and China.
The promise of fusion — in which hydrogen isotopes are heated to such extreme temperatures that they fuse and release energy — has excited scientists since the 1950s.
Unlike fission, the process of splitting atoms that is used by nuclear power stations, fusion produces no long-lived nuclear waste.
However, despite decades of research many scientists believe fusion power stations are still a long way off.
Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz is an enthusiastic supporter of fusion research, stressing during the campaign for last month’s federal elections that Europe must not leave the field to China.
Merz, who has also said that he wants to explore the use of small modular reactors as well as the possibility of reversing the 2023 shutdown of Germany’s last three nuclear power plants, has said that Germany should host the world’s first fusion reactor to be connected to the energy grid.
Marvel Fusion, founded in 2019, is one of the few European start-ups seeking to take part in the international competition to achieve that goal.
It is aiming to build a fusion power plant able to put electricity on to the grid by the middle of the 2030s.
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