Amazon is investing in X-Energy Reactor Company's $500 million venture round as it becomes clear that AI factories will be increasingly tethered to nuclear reactors.
The company's investment lands a day after Google made a similar move. Nuclear power is seeing a renaissance due to the energy needs of AI workloads.
Under the X-energy investment round, Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, Citadel Founder and CEO Ken Griffin, affiliates of Ares Management Corporation, NGP, and the University of Michigan are investors.
- Google plans to use Kairos Power small modular reactors for data centers
- Generative AI driving interest in nuclear power for data centers
- Constellation Energy, Microsoft ink nuclear power pact for AI data center
X-energy aims to bring more than 5 gigawatts online to the US by 2039. If X-energy hits its target it will have the largest commercial deployments of small nuclear reactors (SMRs). As part of the deal, Amazon committed to support an initial 320-megawatt project with Energy Northwest.
The money will be used to fund X-energy's reactor design and licensing and the first phase of its fuel fabrication facility. X-energy and Amazon will also collaborate to standardize deployments and financing models.
These SMR companies are in the early stages, but raking in funding. Many of the timelines for commercial deployments extend into 2030 or later.
X-energy features are its Xe-100 SMR design and TRISO-X fuel. Each reactor unit is engineered to provide 80 MW of electricity and is optimized in multi-unit plants ranging from 320 MW to 960 MW. These SMRs can be shipped via road, which should enable easier scaling.
