Matt Loszak
Data verified as of Aug 27, 2026
Aalo Atomics is an Austin-based nuclear startup founded in 2023 by CEO Matt Loszak and CTO Yasir Arafat (former lead of INL's MARVEL microreactor) to mass-manufacture sodium-cooled reactors purpose-built for AI data centers. Its product line pairs the factory-built 10 MWe Aalo-1 reactor with the Aalo Pod, a 50 MWe 'extra modular' plant that clusters five reactors and is designed to install in months. Selected for the DOE's Reactor Pilot Program in August 2025, Aalo brought its Aalo-X Critical Test Reactor at Idaho National Laboratory to first criticality on July 4, 2026 - the fourth DOE-authorized advanced reactor to meet Executive Order 14301's deadline, less than eight months after groundbreaking. The company has raised over $300 million, including a $100M Series B led by Valor Equity Partners, and was negotiating a roughly $500M Series C at a $4-5B valuation as of mid-2026 to help fund the planned one-million-square-foot 'GigaWatt Factory' beyond its 40,000 sq ft Austin pilot plant, which it said in July 2026 would expand tenfold to 400,000 sq ft within a year while it hires 100-200 more staff. On July 30, 2026 Aalo named cloud provider Crusoe as the partner for Project Ascension, its second, commercial-scale 10 MWe reactor on the Aalo-X campus: a 2027 proof-of-concept will pair a 50 MWe Aalo Pod with a Crusoe Spark modular data center at INL, with both companies targeting commercial nuclear-powered AI data center deployments by the end of 2029. Aalo says it is also preparing to submit its first commercial reactor license application (a combined construction and operating license) to the NRC in 2026, with a long-term target of 3 cents/kWh electricity.
A factory-mass-manufactured 10 MWe (30 MWt) sodium-cooled, graphite-moderated reactor running on low-enriched uranium-dioxide fuel at near-atmospheric pressure. Sized to ship by truck, with fully passive shutdown and 72+ hour passive decay-heat removal; five Aalo-1s power each Aalo Pod.
Full-scale core design demonstrated criticality in the Aalo-X Critical Test Reactor at INL on July 4, 2026; commercial units will deploy in 50 MWe Aalo Pods.
Aalo's 'extra modular' power plant for AI data centers: five Aalo-1 reactors with shared turbines producing 50 MWe on the footprint of a few tennis courts. Built from factory-manufactured truck-sized modules, designed to install in months and to phase maintenance so the plant is never fully offline.
First commercial Pod construction is planned to begin in 2028, with availability targeted for Q3 2028. Cloud provider Crusoe was named July 30, 2026 as the partner that will first pair an Aalo Pod with a data center: a 2027 proof-of-concept at INL, ahead of commercial deployments the two companies are targeting by the end of 2029.
Aalo's experimental reactor campus at Idaho National Laboratory, built under the DOE Reactor Pilot Program. Its sodium-cooled Critical Test Reactor - a full-scale Aalo-1 core with 13 uranium-dioxide fuel assemblies - reached first criticality on July 4, 2026; the campus's follow-on Project Ascension reactor is intended to generate 10 MWe and power a co-located experimental data center.
Critical Test Reactor achieved criticality July 4, 2026 - the fourth DOE-authorized advanced reactor to meet the Executive Order 14301 deadline - less than eight months after groundbreaking. Project Ascension earthwork is complete and first concrete is underway.
Complete the Project Ascension reactor at INL
Finish construction of the second, commercial-scale 10 MWe reactor on the Aalo-X campus - excavation and earthwork were complete by criticality day and first-concrete preparation is underway, with reactor completion targeted by end of 2026. The reactor is considered successful once it demonstrates full 10 MW output, ahead of integrating with the Crusoe-partnered Data Center Proving Ground in 2027.
Commission the Aalo-0 sodium test prototype
Bring the full-scale non-nuclear sodium test prototype - which circulates roughly 60,000 lb of sodium to validate heat-transport and power-conversion systems (heat exchangers, plugging meters, cold traps, heat tracing, instrumentation, welds) - into commissioning at Idaho National Laboratory, where its modules were shipped from the Austin factory in December 2025, ahead of commercial reactor production.
Generate power for a co-located data center at INL with Crusoe
Bring the Aalo-X campus to power operations so Project Ascension's 10 MWe reactor can feed an on-site experimental data center - the first nuclear plant purpose-paired with a data center. On July 30, 2026 Aalo named its first named data-center partner for this work, Crusoe: a 2027 proof-of-concept at INL will pair a 50 MWe Aalo Pod with a Crusoe Spark modular data center running Crusoe Cloud, with both companies targeting commercial nuclear-powered AI data center deployments by the end of 2029.
Begin construction of the first commercial Aalo Pod
Start building the first commercial 50 MWe Aalo Pod for a data-center customer, with construction planned to begin in 2028 and availability targeted for Q3 2028. Crusoe, named July 30, 2026 as the partner for Aalo's 2027 INL proof-of-concept, is targeting commercial nuclear-powered AI data center deployments with Aalo by the end of 2029.
Expand the Austin factory tenfold, then ramp to the one-million-square-foot GigaWatt Factory
Grow the 40,000 sq ft Austin pilot factory tenfold to 400,000 sq ft within 12 months of the July 2026 criticality milestone, hiring roughly 100-200 more staff to run it, en route to the long-term 'GigaWatt Factory' - a one-million-square-foot mass-production plant capable of roughly a gigawatt (100+ reactors) per year. Procurement for the full-scale factory has already begun, with proceeds from the pending Series C earmarked for construction.
Submit combined construction and operating license (COLA) application to the NRC
File Aalo's first commercial reactor license application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a combined construction and operating license (COLA) covering its planned commercial Aalo-1 fleet (including the seven-reactor, 75 MWe Idaho Falls Power project under an existing MOU). Aalo told the NRC and industry peers at a July 2026 advanced-reactor roundtable that it is 'gearing up' to submit the application this year, building on the Regulatory Engagement Plan it filed with the NRC in July 2024.
Venture-funded reactor developer: its first reactor, the Aalo-X Critical Test Reactor, achieved criticality at Idaho National Laboratory in July 2026, but no commercial plant is operating yet. First revenue is expected from Aalo Pod power sales to data-center customers. On July 30, 2026 Aalo named cloud provider Crusoe as the partner for a 2027 nuclear-powered AI data center proof-of-concept at INL, with both companies targeting commercial deployments by the end of 2029. Aalo also says it is preparing to submit its first commercial reactor license application (a combined construction and operating license) to the NRC in 2026.
Aalo Pod power sales (planned)
Behind-the-meter electricity from 50 MWe Aalo Pods co-located with AI data centers, targeting 3¢/kWh at scale; first commercial Pods are slated for construction starting in 2028.
Factory-built reactor manufacturing (planned)
Assembly-line production of Aalo-1 reactors and plant modules from its Austin factory. The current 40,000 sq ft pilot plant is expanding tenfold to 400,000 sq ft over the 12 months following the July 2026 criticality milestone, with a longer-term one-million-square-foot 'GigaWatt Factory' planned to reach gigawatt-per-year output.
At 12:20 a.m. MT on July 4, 2026, Aalo's sodium-cooled, graphite-moderated Critical Test Reactor reached a self-sustaining chain reaction - the fourth DOE-authorized advanced reactor to go critical under Executive Order 14301, less than eight months after groundbreaking and under three years from the company's founding.
On July 30, 2026 cloud provider Crusoe and Aalo Atomics announced a strategic partnership to deploy what they describe as the first nuclear-powered AI data center. A 2027 proof-of-concept at Idaho National Laboratory will pair a 50 MWe Aalo Pod (five Aalo-1 microreactors plus turbine, sodium/air-cooled with no external water) with a Crusoe Spark modular data center running Crusoe Cloud, with the companies aiming to scale toward commercial deployments by the end of 2029.
Days after the Aalo-X criticality milestone, CEO Matt Loszak said Aalo's 40,000 sq ft Austin manufacturing facility off Texas 71 will expand tenfold to 400,000 sq ft over the following 12 months, with a long-term goal of reaching one million square feet, and that the company plans to hire roughly 100-200 more staff to run the expanded plant.
Named one of the initial companies in the DOE's fast-track Reactor Pilot Program (August 12, 2025) to build the Aalo-X experimental reactor at Idaho National Laboratory under DOE authorization, targeting criticality by July 4, 2026; groundbreaking followed within weeks.
Partnered with Microsoft (announced November 17, 2025) to apply Microsoft's generative-AI permitting tools and AI agents to Aalo's regulatory and engineering workflows, aiming to speed licensing and deployment of its factory-built reactors; the project later won two awards at Microsoft's internal hackathon.
Cumulative disclosed raise · dated rounds
GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy
Nuclear Fission
GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GVH, formerly GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy) is the Wilmington, North Carolina-based nuclear alliance formed by GE (60%, now GE Vernova) and Hitachi (40%) in 2007, combining reactor design, services for the global boiling-water-reactor fleet, and fuel manufacturing through Global Nuclear Fuel. Its flagship BWRX-300 small modular reactor - a 300 MWe natural-circulation design derived from the NRC-certified ESBWR - is the first grid-scale SMR under construction in the Western world, with Ontario Power Generation building the first of four units at Darlington for service by the end of 2030. In the US, TVA's Clinch River construction permit application cleared its NRC staff safety evaluation in June 2026, backed by a $400M DOE award, and in March 2026 the US and Japanese governments announced up to $40B to deploy up to 10 BWRX-300s (3 GW) in Tennessee and Alabama under the US–Japan strategic investment framework. The order book extends across Poland (ORLEN Synthos Green Energy, including a June 2026 agreement for up to six units at Włocławek), the UK (Generic Design Assessment completed December 2025; an SGE-led team bid in mid-2026 to build 14 units), a new US project with Elementl Power in Meigs County, Ohio (up to five units, agreed June 2026), Estonia (where parliament passed a comprehensive nuclear energy law in June 2026), Hungary, Saskatchewan, Lithuania (MOU signed February 2026) and Bulgaria (JV letter of intent signed December 2025), plus a March 2026 MOU with Hitachi to explore Southeast Asia. GVH lost Sweden's first new-nuclear competition in June 2026, when Vattenfall's Videberg Kraft venture picked Rolls-Royce SMR over the BWRX-300 for its Ringhals project. GVH also co-developed the Natrium sodium-cooled fast reactor with TerraPower, which began construction in Wyoming in 2026. Jason Cooper became President & CEO in January 2026. GE Vernova's Q2 2026 10-Q separately disclosed Nuclear Power segment revenue for the first time - $1,575M for H1 2026, up from $1,310M in H1 2025.
Holtec International
Nuclear Fission
Holtec International is a vertically integrated nuclear technology and services company whose core businesses include used-fuel storage and transport systems, plant decommissioning, manufacturing, and nuclear project execution. Its flagship growth program is the restart of the Palisades plant in Michigan, which would be the first U.S. nuclear plant to return from decommissioning to operations status: on August 30, 2026 Holtec began loading fuel into the 204-assembly reactor core, the most visible physical milestone yet, though extensive tests and inspections and a firm restart date still lie ahead. Its other flagship program is the SMR-300 small modular reactor platform, which Holtec is advancing at Palisades and in the UK with EDF. Holtec is also pursuing a large SMR-300 program in India - where a March 2025 U.S. DOE 10CFR810 authorization lets it share the design with partners Tata Consulting Engineers, Larsen & Toubro, and its Holtec Asia subsidiary - with a February 2026 plan to build up to 200 SMR-300s from an expanded manufacturing hub in Gujarat, and in Rwanda, where a May 2026 Comprehensive Development Agreement with the country's Atomic Energy Board targets up to roughly 5 GW of capacity, Holtec's first sub-Saharan African market. After a confidential filing in February 2026, Holtec publicly filed a Form S-1 on July 10, 2026 for a Nasdaq / Nasdaq Texas IPO under the ticker HNUC - the S-1 disclosing $989M of revenue for the 12 months ended March 31, 2026 - in an offering that Renaissance Capital estimates could raise about $2 billion (with press reporting on overall company valuation running as high as roughly $10 billion). An S-1/A amendment filed August 21, 2026 updated the offering's financials through the six months ended June 30, 2026, disclosing $269.9M of revenue (down from $286.6M in the first half of 2025) alongside higher gross operating profit of $118.5M (up from $78.8M); shares and price range remain unset as of August 31, 2026. Holtec's SMR-300 pipeline now spans Palisades, the Green River, Utah revival project, a newly cleared Oyster Creek, New Jersey site (NRC approved the plant's license termination plan on July 30, 2026, opening the way for four more SMR-300 units there), the Cottam, UK proposal with EDF, and Rwanda - and on August 4, 2026 Holtec signed a non-binding memorandum of agreement with Entergy and Hyundai Engineering & Construction to evaluate further SMR-300 projects across Entergy's Gulf South territory.
Kairos Power
Nuclear Fission
Kairos Power is commercializing its fluoride salt-cooled, high-temperature reactor (KP-FHR), which combines TRISO pebble fuel with FLiBe coolant in a compact, low-pressure design. The company runs an iterative, vertically integrated development model centered on Hermes 1, a 35 MWth demonstration reactor under safety-related construction in Oak Ridge, and Hermes 2, an electricity-producing demonstration plant for the TVA grid. In April 2026 Kairos broke ground on Hermes 2 - the first deployment under its Google-backed fleet plan totaling up to 500 MWe by 2035 - while a May 2026 NRC amendment extended Hermes 1's construction-completion deadline to April 2029 (Kairos now expects to finish building the test reactor in 2028). Kairos operates two ISO 9001:2015-certified sites (Alameda and Albuquerque) as it scales toward serial reactor-hardware production, and Hermes 2 is targeted to deliver first grid power around 2030. The company is also building out its fuel and materials supply chain, including a February 2026 five-year, $27M partnership with Oak Ridge National Laboratory and being named the first customer for BWXT's $500M TRISO fuel plant in Wyoming, which in July 2026 laid out a phased schedule toward full commercial production by 2031. In August 2026 Kairos also launched NuCAMP, a 12-month manufacturing-methods and workforce-training partnership with Oak Ridge National Laboratory and regional universities and colleges at its Oak Ridge campus.
NuScale Power
Nuclear Fission
NuScale Power is a public small modular reactor developer commercializing its NRC-approved 77 MWe NuScale Power Module through ENTRA1-led deployments. In 2025-26 it advanced a nonbinding program with TVA for up to 6 GW of NuScale capacity (with CEO John Hopkins still targeting a binding PPA by year-end 2026, with no definitive agreement as of the Q2 2026 earnings call), secured a Final Investment Decision for the Romanian RoPower project (though a July 2026 Romanian government control-body audit alleging schedule slippage and cost overruns at Doicești has become a political overhang, even as Nuclearelectrica shareholders voted to keep NuScale as the sole chosen technology), and launched a strategic petrochemical process-heat partnership with Ebara Elliott Energy. NuScale remains pre-deployment and ended Q2 2026 with about $1.9B in cash, cash equivalents and investments, up roughly $900M from Q1, on Q2 revenue of $75,000 and a net loss of $50.1M. 2026 work is centered on first-module manufacturing readiness - components for 12 modules are in production - fuel supply, and converting its development pipeline into binding projects. In late August 2026 NuScale announced a strategic alliance with Nuclearn and NPX to deploy nuclear-specific AI tools across its engineering and licensing workflows (an early proof of concept cut information-search time by up to 80%), while RBC Capital cut its price target on the stock to $10 from $14 citing the still-unsigned TVA agreement.
Oklo
Nuclear Fission
Oklo is developing fast-fission power plants under its Aurora product line while building a vertically integrated nuclear business around power sales, fuel recycling, and radioisotopes. Aurora units are designed to produce 15-75 MWe and run on fresh, recycled, or down-blended fuel, targeting customers such as data centers, industrial sites, military facilities, utilities, and remote communities. Its first plant, Aurora-INL at Idaho National Laboratory, is advancing under DOE's Reactor Pilot Program - the DOE approved its Preliminary Documented Safety Analysis on June 11, 2026, leaving the final Documented Safety Analysis as the last safety-basis step before authorization. Oklo is deepening vertical integration through the June 2026 acquisitions of Oak Ridge precision manufacturer ARMEC and sodium-systems engineering firm Creative Engineers, plus its May 2026 selection for DOE's Surplus Plutonium Utilization Program, while Atomic Alchemy builds U.S. isotope supply around the Groves test reactor in Lockhart, Texas, which reached first criticality on August 5, 2026.
TerraPower
Nuclear Fission
TerraPower is a nuclear innovation company founded by Bill Gates with two business lines: the Natrium sodium fast reactor with integrated molten-salt energy storage, and TerraPower Isotopes, a medical-isotope business producing actinium-225 for targeted cancer therapies. In March 2026 the NRC issued Kemmerer Unit 1 the first construction permit for a commercial-scale advanced nuclear plant in the U.S., and on April 23, 2026 TerraPower and contractor Bechtel officially began plant construction in Wyoming, a build expected to mobilize roughly 1,600 workers; on July 21, 2026 TerraPower became the first advanced-reactor developer accepted into the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations. In January 2026 TerraPower signed a landmark agreement with Meta to develop up to eight Natrium plants in the U.S., marking a shift from a single demonstration toward a commercial fleet, and on August 14, 2026 it deepened its Korean industrial supply chain with a preliminary joint-business agreement with SK Innovation for South Korea's first commercial Natrium plant, selection of Hyundai Engineering & Construction as EPC contractor for up to eight future Natrium reactors, and a reactor-vessel manufacturing contract with Doosan Enerbility. On August 31, 2026 it awarded 12 additional supplier contracts for Kemmerer Unit 1 and an on-site sodium test and fill facility. CEO Chris Levesque has said TerraPower plans to announce a second Natrium project - this one for an AI data-center customer - before the end of 2026. The core reactor business remains pre-revenue, but Natrium has moved from development into full project execution under DOE's ARDP cost-share program, while TerraPower Isotopes already sells actinium-225 commercially to pharmaceutical partners and is building a $450 million second production facility in Philadelphia.