Marvel Fusion's laser bet: €113M round, first ATLAS fusion facility at CSU

Marvel Fusion designs laser-driven inertial fusion power plants — high-energy lasers fire at a fuel target — and is industrializing the lasers themselves.

That laser-driven fusion can be industrialized: scale high-energy lasers, prove them in a university facility, and design a plant before net energy is demonstrated.

EUR 113M Series B (extended March 2025); total funding EUR 385M — EUR 170M private, EUR 215M in public cooperation projects; company later cited USD 400M+

Founded in Munich in 2019 by Moritz von der Linden, Marvel Fusion bet that high-repetition, high-energy lasers could make inertial fusion commercially viable, building on the target-energy-gain result demonstrated at the National Ignition Facility in 2022. It raised venture rounds from European investors and steadily added industrial partners.

In March 2025 the company extended its Series B by €50M to €113M with EQT Ventures, Siemens Energy Ventures and the EIC Fund, bringing total funding to EUR 385M (EUR 170M private, EUR 215M in public cooperation projects) — the most of any European fusion company. Construction of the ATLAS laser facility with Colorado State University began in Fort Collins; CSU topped out the 77,626-square-foot building in April 2026, on track for substantial completion in December 2026. Siemens Energy is co-designing the fusion power-plant concept.

Still privately held and scaling: ATLAS is the first large laser-fusion facility built under a commercial university partnership, slated for completion in December 2026, while the company builds two laser prototypes and industrial partnerships for scaled laser production.

Marvel tied its round to concrete industrial partners — Siemens Energy for the plant, CSU for the facility — so the money bought physical infrastructure, not just payroll.

The EIC Fund's first fusion equity investment signaled European policy support for laser fusion as an 'industrial challenge' rather than pure science.

Building ATLAS at a university spread cost and risk while giving the company access to existing laser research and a talent pipeline.

The bet is unproven: no net-energy demonstration yet, and the economics of laser production at power-plant scale still lie ahead.

A startup can buy credibility with hard infrastructure: tying an equity round to a university flagship facility turned a laser-fusion thesis into a construction project with a completion date.

As of September 2026 Marvel Fusion is building two laser prototypes, progressing the Siemens Energy power-plant concept, and pushing ATLAS toward completion at the end of 2026. Its EUR 385M total funding makes it the best-funded European fusion company, but revenue and a net-energy demonstration still lie ahead.