In a burgeoning move toward renewable energy sources, companies focused on small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) have garnered significant funding, over $1.5 billion within the last year. The urgency stems from the rising energy demands of AI and support from governmental entities. Notable investments include X-energy with $700 million and a total of $700 million directed towards U.S. initiatives. Valar Atomics, with $19 million in seed funding, aims to utilize a gigafactory model for SMR production to lower costs and facilitate quicker deployment, with plans for sites servicing data centers and industrial operations globally.
For example, X-energy raised $700 million this month, and Paris-based Newcleo raised $151 million last year, and one would be remiss to not mention the $700 million invested into Oklo, NuScale and Nano Nuclear for similar projects in the U.S.
Valar's co-founder and CEO, Isaiah Taylor, told TechCrunch that the constraint on building reactors isn't the technology as much as how it's deployed.
By effectively creating a production line of SMRs, Valar hopes to drastically reduce the costs associated with building nuclear reactors, which are traditionally bespoke projects.
The company plans to build hundreds of SMRs at predominantly off-grid sites to power data centers and industrial plants.
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