CERN gets 1 billion US dollar pledge for FCC
A consortium of private donors supports CERN's Future Circular Collider by an epochal pledge
22.12.2025
This is a really overwhelming christmas gift: The Breakthrough Prize Foundation, The Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fund for Strategic Innovation, and the entrepreneurs John Elkann and Xavier Niel, have pledged CERN 1 billion US dollars towards the construction of the Future Circular Collider (FCC).
The LMU Munich team is very proud to be part of CERN's endeavour which will create "the most powerful scientific instrument in history, that can shed new light on the deepest questions humanity can ask" as Dr. S.Pete Worden, Chairman of the Breakthrough Prize Foundation, says. And "Beyond the science, the technologies emerging from this project could benefit society in profound ways, from medicine to computing to sustainable energy, while training a new generation of innovators and problem-solvers" as Eric Schmidt points out. The LMU Munich team is ready to contribute their share to the advancement of the FCC project and to train this new generation of researchers.
Read more about the private donors at https://home.cern/news/press-release/cern/private-donors-pledge-860-million-euros-cerns-future-circular-collider, about the ongoing process to update the European Strategy for Particle Physics, and about CERN at home.cern/about.
Artistic view of a possible Future Circular collider and of a particle collision (image by: PIXELRISE and CERN)