How AI Is Ushering In A New Nuclear Age

Forbes

Atomic energy is back, thanks to the ravenous demands of AI, favoritism from Trump, and the zeal of young entrepreneurs raising billions to build mini-reactors. The upside is unlimited.  Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2025/11/21/how-ai-is-ushering-in-a-new-nuclear-age/  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

00:00Today on Forbes, how AI is ushering in a new nuclear age.

00:06At Allo Atomic's 40,000-square-foot factory on the south side of Austin, Texas,

00:11workers move 5-eighths-inch-thick steel plates onto machines that slowly bend and roll them

00:17into 12-foot-wide cylinders, which they then weld into 25-foot-tall vessels.

00:23These could be made cheaper by outside contractors.

00:25But Allo co-founder and CEO Matt Lozak wants to do this work in-house,

00:31since each vessel will eventually contain the guts of a 10-megawatt nuclear fission reactor.

00:36Five of these Allo-1 reactor units, working in tandem, will power a single 50-megawatt electric turbine,

00:44enough juice to run a large data processing center or 45,000 homes.

00:50Lozak, a 35-year-old Canadian engineer now on his third startup,

00:54declares, quote,

00:56It's not a paper reactor. It's getting built.

00:59In August, Allo broke ground on a two-acre site at the Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory,

01:05where it aims to achieve so-called criticality by July 4, 2026,

01:11America's 250th birthday,

01:13and the deadline President Donald Trump has set for at least three U.S. startups

01:17to prove that their advanced nuclear reactor designs work.

01:22To achieve criticality, Allo will load a vessel with off-the-shelf nuclear fuel rod assemblies

01:27and then initiate a self-sustaining nuclear fission chain reaction.

01:31As for producing electricity, that comes later.

01:36Even after achieving criticality, Allo will still need to build out manufacturing and a supply chain of vendors,

01:43sign data center customers, and get final approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

01:48Lozak is shopping for up to 1 million square feet for a gigafactory

01:52and recently hired Bryson Gentile,

01:55who headed Falcon 9 Manufacturing at Elon Musk's SpaceX,

01:58to set up Allo's mass production operation.

02:01Lozak vows, quote,

02:03We'll get the factory set up,

02:05come down the cost curve,

02:06and have this holy grail product.

02:08What Elon did with electric cars and rockets

02:10was kind of like running the four-minute mile.

02:13When that happens, everyone's like,

02:15Wait, this is possible.

02:17He hopes to produce electricity in 2027.

02:20Demand for electricity is soaring,

02:24largely because of the power-sucking data centers

02:27undergirding the artificial intelligence boom.

02:30And Lozak isn't the only nuclear entrepreneur

02:32aiming to ride the wave of AI dollars.

02:35A dozen ventures with names like Valor Atomics,

02:39Oklo, K-Ros Power, and X-Energy

02:41are racing to perfect, permit,

02:44and deploy a new generation of small, prefabricated reactors

02:47that could power individual data centers

02:50or even feed the larger electrical grid.

02:53So far in 2025,

02:56venture capitalists, stock market investors,

02:58billionaires, the Department of Energy,

03:00and others have poured more than $4 billion

03:03into these and other new U.S. nuclear ventures

03:06versus closer to $500 million in 2020,

03:10per pitch book.

03:11Tens of billions more will be needed

03:13if nuclear power is to make a comeback.

03:15Two-year-old Allo has raised $136 million,

03:20$100 million of that in August,

03:22with billionaire Antonio Gracias's Valor Equity Partners

03:25as its lead backer.

03:27Valor was one of Tesla's first institutional investors,

03:31and Gracias, who sits on SpaceX's board,

03:33told Forbes that Allo will be a winner

03:35because of its commitment to manufacturing

03:37and vertical integration,

03:39quote,

03:40similar to Tesla's first principles approach

03:42to batteries, electric vehicles, and robotics.

03:46These startups won't all succeed,

03:49but the stars seem aligned

03:50for nuclear energy's comeback.

03:52Demand is there.

03:54OpenAI's Sam Altman has said

03:56he'll need an outlandish 250 gigawatts of power

03:59in eight years.

04:00For comparison,

04:02that's as much as Brazil uses.

04:03More sober analysts predict that by 2030,

04:08data centers will need double

04:09the roughly 40 gigawatts they now consume.

04:13At the current average industrial electricity price

04:15of 9 cents per kilowatt hour,

04:1840 gigawatts would cost $32 billion a year.

04:22But prices will rise

04:23if demand grows faster than generating capacity.

04:26Analysts see natural gas turbines

04:28filling maybe 60% of the need,

04:31but those are on four-year back order.

04:32Coal remains unpopular,

04:35no matter how often Trump refers

04:36to the dirtiest fossil fuel

04:38as, quote,

04:39beautiful and clean.

04:41Wind and solar,

04:42besides being on Trump's hit list,

04:44don't provide the sort of 24-7 reliability

04:46data centers require.

04:48That's a big gap

04:49for nuclear startups to fill.

04:52For full coverage,

04:54check out Christopher Hellman

04:55and Phoebe Liu's piece

04:56on Forbes.com.

04:59This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes.

05:01Thanks for tuning in.

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