Major companies want their own nuclear reactors to produce electricity for artificial intelligence
Technology giants, such as Amazon, and industrial giants, such as Dow, are investing huge capital in small modular reactor (SMR) manufacturers.
The reason: artificial intelligence requires increasing electricity production, and tiny nuclear reactors will do it quickly.
The American nuclear energy company X-energy announced this week that it raised massive capital of about 700 million dollars.
The funding brings the total capital the company has raised in the past year to about 1.4 billion dollars.
The enormous investment reflects the growing belief among investors and industrial entities that atomic energy, particularly the new generation of small modular reactors (SMR), is the key to supplying the electricity needed for the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution.
The global data center industry, whose energy consumption is rising with the strengthening of AI models, seeks reliable, carbon-free energy solutions that can be scaled quickly features that SMRs promise to provide.
About a year ago, X-energy received an investment of approximately half a billion dollars from technology giant Amazon.
Amazon received two seats on the X-energy board and involvement in the construction of SMR reactors, including the giant CAEF project in the state of Washington to produce about 960 megawatts of electricity.
Chemical giant Dow Inc and British energy company Centrica also invested in X-energy.
X-energy CEO, Clay Sell, revealed that the company has a backlog of orders worth “11 gigawatts and up,” meaning orders for the construction of 144 SMR reactors.
An SMR reactor is a nuclear fission reactor producing less than 300 megawatts of electricity, about a third of the capacity of conventional nuclear reactors.
The main advantage of SMRs is the possibility to produce them in serial production at factories, transport them to different sites as modules, and install them relatively quickly at a lower initial cost.
X-energy is developing Xe-100 reactors that use helium gas as a cooling material, unlike most conventional reactors, which use water.
The company claims its reactors are “orders of magnitude safer” than traditional nuclear reactors and “meltdown proof.”
The X-energy funding is part of a wave of massive investments in the SMR sector, placing private financing at the center of global nuclear development.
The global SMR market was estimated at about 6.3 billion dollars in 2024, and it is widely expected to grow to 13.8 billion dollars by 2032.
The push for SMR development is global. In Europe, particularly in the UK and Poland, they are seen as a solution to reduce carbon emissions the U.S. government provides significant regulatory and financial support Russia and China already operate modular reactors commercially.
The largest developers of SMR reactors are X-energy, TerraPower, NuScale, and Westinghouse in the U.S.
Rolls-Royce, as well as CNNC associated with the Chinese government, and Rosatom belonging to the Russian government.