The nuclear startup world is going, well, nuclear.
Yesterday, El Segundo-based Valar Atomics announced a whopping $1B Series B led by Sequoia Capital. The raise comes hot on the heels of the three-year-old startup’s microreactor hitting criticality (when a nuclear chain reaction becomes self-sustaining) in the Department of Energy’s Reactor Pilot Program, a partnership with Nvidia focused on powering data centers, and a bunch of other rapid-fire milestones.
- Apandion, Atreides Management, Conviction, Dream Ventures, HOF Capital, Point72, Riot Ventures, Snowpoint Ventures, and Valor Equity Partners participated in the round.
Big energy: Valar is one of a handful of startups pushing hard—and fast—to revive America’s nuclear industry. Like others, including Antares, Oklo, Radiant, and Aalo Atomics, they’ve raised mountains of cash to get there.
- Valar last raised $130M in a Series A last October from investors including Anduril founder Palmer Luckey and Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar.
- On top of the Series B, Valar also closed a $200M credit facility.
That money’s not for nothing. The company, founded by 27-year-old high school dropout Isaiah Taylor, has had a summer for the ages, and the broader industry is seeing unprecedented demand and government support.
- In June, Valar’s micoreactor hit criticality, which the company says made it the first to take a nuclear reactor critical outside of a national lab. Antares, Radiant, and Deployable Energy also took their reactors critical, with Antares crossing the finish line first.
- A week later, Valar’s reactor generated electricity to power an NVIDIA Blackwell during a live demo with the chip giant, with whom the startup subsequently announced a partnership focused on reducing data center water consumption.
Funding fuel: With a cool $1B in new pocket change, Valar has its eyes set on transitioning “from demonstrating the operability of an integrated reactor system to producing fleets of them en masse,” the company said in a statement. “This Series B financing is the fuel for this mission. It will allow us to fully execute a vertically integrated, hardware-first approach; one that encompasses everything from reactor deployment and long-term operations to fuel production.”
“With each reactor built, the tick rate will become smaller until Valar is producing tens, then hundreds, then thousands of reactors per year,” Valar added. “Eventually, factories filled wall to wall with small modular reactors will allow a once unaffordable energy source to approach the cost of production.”
Starting to feel like the future around here.
