Nuclear's AI Opportunity

We’re seeing an interesting convergence of trends opening the door for a nuclear revival:
1. AI’s energy-intensive nature
2. Demand for clean baseload power to meet those needs
3. Big tech’s willingness to finance it
Industry veterans, utilities, and the people building nuclear companies know the challenges ahead. Nuclear power will be a hard problem to solve.
The question comes down to economics and engineering, i.e., how can we make nuclear energy affordable enough to justify all the benefits?
The companies across the SMR and microreactor landscape are trying to solve that problem (note: placements are approximate, and designs can change, so consider this a rough approximation of size based on the best available information):

Buoyed by the hyperscaler’s recent investments in nuclear, see recent announcements here:
- Amazon invested in a $500M round into nuclear startup X-energy while supporting the construction of 320MW worth of nuclear generation.
- Google signed a deal to support the development of over 500MW of power from nuclear startup Kairos.
- Amazon bought a nuclear-powered data center for $650M, intending to expand energy consumption from 300MW to 960MW over the coming years.
- Microsoft signed an agreement to restart the reactor at Three Mile Island. It is rumored that they have signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) for approximately $800M/year for 20 years.