Big Tech backs next‑gen nuclear
To secure reliable, large-scale power for AI data centres, major tech firms have begun financing next-generation nuclear projects—shifting from off-take talk to direct financial support that underwrites new generation capacity. This is being framed as risk management rather than philanthropy: companies want to guarantee electricity supply for power-hungry compute. (reuters.com)
The new thing here is not that technology companies want nuclear power. It is that they are starting to pay upfront so reactors actually get built, instead of just promising to buy electricity later if a plant ever opens. (reuters.com) That change fixes the hardest part of new nuclear: money before concrete. Reactor developers can usually find future customers, but lenders want proof that somebody will share the early risk when projects are still drawings, permits, and supply-chain orders. (reuters.com) The customer pushing this is the artificial intelligence data center. The Electric Power Research Institute said data centers used about 4% of United States electricity in 2023 and could reach up to 9% by 2030. (epri.com) A data center cannot run like a steel mill that pauses when power prices spike. Training and serving artificial intelligence models needs steady electricity every hour, which is why companies keep using the phrase “24/7 carbon-free power” in these deals. (blog.google) Google showed the earlier version of this model in October 2024 when it signed a deal with Kairos Power for up to 500 megawatts from a fleet of advanced reactors, with the first unit targeted for 2030 and more through 2035. That was a promise to buy output from plants Kairos would build and operate. (kairospower.com) Amazon went a step closer that same month. It backed X-energy financially, supported an initial 320-megawatt project with Energy Northwest in Washington state, and said the broader target was more than 5 gigawatts in the United States by 2039. (x-energy.com) Microsoft used a different route in September 2024. It signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with Constellation Energy to help restart Three Mile Island Unit 1 in Pennsylvania, a reactor that Constellation says would add about 835 megawatts back to the grid in 2027 under the new Crane Clean Energy Center name. (constellationenergy.com) Meta pushed the model furthest in January 2026. It announced nuclear agreements totaling up to 6.6 gigawatts across Vistra, TerraPower, and Oklo, including a TerraPower plan for up to eight Natrium plants and an Oklo agreement that allows Meta to prepay for power and fund early development work in southern Ohio. (about.fb.com, (terrapower.com), (oklo.com)) The reactor companies are not all selling the same machine. Kairos is developing a molten-salt reactor, X-energy is building the Xe-100 small modular reactor, TerraPower’s Natrium design pairs a reactor with energy storage, and Oklo is pitching compact Aurora powerhouses for colocated industrial sites and data centers. (kairospower.com), (x-energy.com), (terrapower.com), (oklo.com)) What ties them together is size and siting. These companies are selling reactors in blocks that fit new data-center campuses better than a giant 1-gigawatt conventional plant, and they are selling long-term reliability at a moment when utilities in several states are warning that data-center queues are overwhelming grid planning. (reuters.com), (msn.com) The catch is that most of this capacity does not exist yet. The deals can speed financing, equipment orders, and hiring, but they do not erase licensing risk, transmission delays, or the nuclear industry’s long record of projects arriving late and over budget. (reuters.com), (world-nuclear-news.org) So the bet is simple: spend money now to avoid a power shortage later. For companies building artificial intelligence systems, a reactor that comes online in 2030 is starting to look less like an energy experiment and more like a reserved seat on a very crowded grid. (reuters.com), (epri.com)
