Nuclear startups have been soaking up attention from hyperscalers and cash from investors. Aalo Atomics is the latest beneficiary of the Big Tech-small nuclear love affair, raising $100 million in a Series B, the company announced today.
The startup plans to flip the switch on its first reactor in the summer of 2026, CEO Matt Loszak said in a LinkedIn post. The facility will be located on the campus of the Idaho National Laboratory.
Aalo — not to be confused with the defunct furniture startup — could be considered a pseudo-spinout of the Department of Energy lab, which developed and open sourced a small modular reactor design called Marvel. The company’s CTO, Yasir Arafat, previously led Marvel’s design, which Aalo says “inspired” its prototype. Aalo also received development support from the Idaho National Lab as part of an Obama administration program to accelerate nuclear reactor development.
The Series B round was led by Valor Equity Partners with participation from 50Y, Alumni Ventures, Crescent Enterprises, Crosscut, Fine Structure Ventures, Gaingels, Harpoon Ventures, Hitachi Ventures, Kindred Ventures, MCJ, NRG Energy, Nucleation Capital, Perpetual VC, Tishman Speyer, and VamosVentures.
If Aalo can meet its aggressive deadline, it would buck a trend in the nuclear industry, which has a history of long timelines compounded by delays.
Like many advanced nuclear startups, Aalo is counting on economies of scale to help rein in both costs and build times. If the company can prove its approach works, it says it will build thousands of Aalo Pod power plants, which will consist of five Aalo-1 reactors delivering heat to a single turbine to generate a total of 50 megawatts of electricity.
The startup says that the Aalo-X prototype will also have an “experimental” data center built next door, a detail that sounds more like a marketing ploy than a technological innovation.
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Ultimately, Aalo says it aims to deliver electricity at 3 cents per kilowatt-hour, a price that would make it competitive with new natural gas power plants and solar farms built today. The startup hasn’t put a timeline on that price, though, a wise move given the nuclear industry’s previous promises.
Aalo isn’t the only nuclear startup making news this week. Yesterday, Kairos said that the Tennessee Valley Authority agreed to buy 50 megawatts of generating capacity from its Hermes 2 power plant, which the startup is planning to build in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Google, in turn, will use that power to drive its data centers.
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