Francesco Sciortino, Co-Founder and CEO of Proxima Fusion, Is Turning Fusion Research into an Industrial Mission
Published: 2026 | Author: VisionariesNetwork Team
Fusion energy has long occupied an unusual place in science. It promises an abundant source of low-carbon energy, yet turning that promise into a practical power plant requires solving some of the most difficult problems in physics and engineering. Francesco Sciortino has spent much of his career working on those problems, moving between major fusion research facilities in the US and Europe before taking on a much broader challenge as Co-Founder and CEO of Proxima Fusion.
Founded in 2023 as a spin-out from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, Proxima is developing fusion power plants based on quasi-isodynamic stellarators. For Sciortino, the company's mission brings together the scientific questions that have shaped his career with the engineering and commercial challenges of creating a new energy industry.
A Career Shaped by Fusion Research
Sciortino's route into fusion began through research rather than entrepreneurship. He completed his PhD in plasma physics and fusion energy at MIT in 2021, where his research focused on the Alcator C-Mod and DIII-D tokamaks in the United States. His work explored reduced models, optimization, and Bayesian inference, giving him experience with computational methods for understanding and improving fusion experiments.
His research career also took him to several international facilities. He worked on projects at the MAGPIE Z-pinch facility at Imperial College London, the TCV tokamak at EPFL in Switzerland, the Magnetic Reconnection Experiment at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, and the APEX-D facility at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Germany.
After completing his doctorate, Sciortino joined the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics. His work there included divertor spectroscopy and numerical optimization on the ASDEX-Upgrade tokamak and Wendelstein 7-X stellarator. He also became one of the European Scientific Coordinators for experimental research into negative triangularity tokamak scenarios.
These experiences gave him exposure to different experimental approaches and, importantly, to the practical realities of conducting fusion research. They also brought him closer to stellarator technology, which would eventually become central to his work outside the laboratory.
Choosing a Different Route to Fusion
Proxima's approach is rooted in the work carried out at Wendelstein 7-X, the large stellarator operated by the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics. Sciortino sees the device as demonstrating a particularly compelling route toward developing fusion power, while also believing that Europe has significant advantages in stellarator research and development.
His view of innovation extends beyond choosing a particular technology. He has emphasized that meaningful advances require both creativity and the willingness to challenge established assumptions. That perspective is especially relevant to fusion, where progress depends on combining established scientific knowledge with new approaches to design, optimization, materials, magnets, and manufacturing.
As CEO, Sciortino now has to connect those disciplines. His role is no longer limited to experiments or computational models. It involves building a company capable of translating scientific knowledge into physical hardware, coordinating researchers and engineers, developing industrial partnerships, and creating a route toward commercial deployment.
Proxima Fusion's Engineering Ambition
Proxima is developing quasi-isodynamic stellarators using high-temperature superconducting technology. Its development program is structured around Alpha, a demonstration stellarator, and Stellaris, its concept for a commercial fusion power plant.
Alpha is intended to bring together the technologies and manufacturing capabilities required for the company's next stage of development. Stellaris represents the larger objective: a power plant designed to generate electricity rather than simply demonstrate scientific performance.
The company has set an ambitious development schedule. Its roadmap includes completing the Stellarator Model Coil and Alpha design in 2027, with Alpha targeted for net energy gain in the early 2030s. Proxima has said that Stellaris is intended to move toward putting fusion electricity on the grid during the 2030s.
The scale of that ambition has also attracted significant investment. In July 2026, Proxima announced a €411 million financing round, bringing its total public and private funding to more than €650 million and its valuation to €2.4 billion. The round included strategic investment from RWE and Google as well as returning and new financial investors.
The funding is supporting work across magnets, superconducting cables, engineering, manufacturing, and the Stellarator Model Coil, while helping Proxima expand the team needed to execute its development program.
From Research Network to Industrial Ecosystem
Proxima's plans increasingly extend beyond its own laboratories. In February 2026, the company, RWE, the Free State of Bavaria, and the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics signed an agreement outlining a pathway toward a commercial stellarator fusion power plant in Europe.
The proposed development would place Alpha in Garching and Stellaris in Gundremmingen, Bavaria. Proxima has also established the Alpha Alliance, bringing together more than 50 industrial partners around its development program.
For Sciortino, this represents a natural progression from the collaborative nature of scientific research, but at a much larger industrial scale. Fusion cannot be commercialized by one discipline or organization working alone. It requires physicists, engineers, manufacturers, energy companies, investors, and technology partners to work toward the same technical objectives.
That is a different kind of leadership challenge from running a conventional technology startup. The development cycles are long, the hardware is highly specialized, and scientific milestones have to translate into engineering decisions and eventually into commercially viable infrastructure.
Leading the Next Phase
Sciortino's background gives him an unusual connection between those worlds. His early work involved studying plasma behavior and developing computational approaches to fusion research. His years at IPP placed him closer to large-scale experimental programs. At Proxima, those experiences have become part of a leadership role focused on turning research into an organization capable of delivering complex technology.
The company's progress will ultimately depend on much more than its scientific proposition. It will require reliable hardware, scalable manufacturing, strong industrial relationships, and sustained execution over many years. That makes Sciortino's role as CEO as much about coordinating these moving parts as it is about understanding the underlying physics.
For someone whose career has taken him through fusion facilities in the US, Switzerland, the UK, and Germany, Proxima offers a markedly different platform. He is now helping shape not just an experiment, but a company and an industrial ecosystem around a particular vision of fusion power.
Proxima Fusion's ambition is to use the advantages of stellarator technology and modern engineering to move fusion closer to commercial electricity generation. Sciortino brings to that effort a career built around experimentation, optimization, and international fusion research. His challenge now is to carry those lessons beyond the research facility and turn them into a technology that can operate at the scale of a power plant.
“Successful innovation requires not only creativity, but also the courage to break with the status quo.”
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