Avi Salzman
Nvidia is investing in a nuclear company founded by Bill Gates, marking an acceleration in the tech industry's race to get the nuclear industry off the ground.
NVentures, Nvidia's venture-capital arm, took part in the latest funding round for TerraPower, a nuclear developer trying to build a new kind of small reactor that could power everything from homes to data centers. TerraPower raised $650 million from NVentures, along with other investors -- including HD Hyundai and Gates, who founded the company and is its chairman. The company has raised more than $1.4 billion to date.
Tech companies have been investing aggressively in the nuclear-power industry over the past couple of years, hoping that reactors can provide electricity for their power-hungry AI data centers without emitting carbon dioxide. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has invested in reactor developer Oklo and was previously its chairman. Amazon.com made an equity investment in advanced reactor developer X-Energy and agreed to buy power from it, and Alphabet agreed to buy power from privately held developer Kairos Energy.
"As AI continues to transform industries, nuclear energy is going to become a more vital energy source to help power these capabilities," said Mohamed "Sid" Siddeek, head of NVentures. Nvidia declined to comment further on the rationale behind its investment in TerraPower.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in an interview with Bloomberg Television last year that "nuclear is wonderful as one of the sources of energy, one of the sources of sustainable energy."
Companies such as Oklo and TerraPower are developing novel approaches to nuclear power that are different from the nuclear reactors that exist today in the U.S. America's 94 existing reactors are large enough to power hundreds of thousands of homes, and rely on technology developed decades ago that uses water as a coolant and to slow down neutrons.
TerraPower, by contrast, is building a "sodium fast reactor" with 345 megawatts of capacity -- about one-third as large as most existing reactors -- that will store the energy produced at the plant in molten salt. TerraPower says the technology "significantly reduces" the plant's safety-related costs. Small reactors can ostensibly be built faster than larger reactors and at a lower cost, though that claim still needs to be borne out -- none have been built in the U.S. yet. Elsewhere, the few small reactors that have been built have reportedly gone over budget, including in China and Russia.
The process of licensing and building a reactor can take at least a decade. TerraPower was founded in 2008, and has not yet received a license to build its reactor. It got an award from the Department of Energy to share costs 50/50 for its first plant in Wyoming. The company has started construction, and expects the plant to be completed in 2030. It expects to get a license by next year.
Write to Avi Salzman at avi.salzman@barrons.com
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June 18, 2025 14:49 ET (18:49 GMT)
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