Nuclear startups continue to capture significant attention from major technology companies and investment capital. Aalo Atomics is the latest company to benefit from this trend, securing one hundred million dollars in a Series B funding round announced today.
The startup has set an ambitious goal to activate its first reactor in the summer of 2026. This facility will be situated on the campus of the Idaho National Laboratory.
Aalo could be considered a pseudo-spinout of the Department of Energy lab, which developed and open-sourced a small modular reactor design named Marvel. The company’s Chief Technology Officer, Yasir Arafat, previously led the Marvel design team, and Aalo states its prototype was inspired by that project. The company also received development support from the Idaho National Lab through a program established during the Obama administration to accelerate nuclear reactor development.
The Series B investment round was led by Valor Equity Partners. It included participation from numerous firms such as 50Y, Alumni Ventures, Crescent Enterprises, Crosscut, Fine Structure Ventures, Gaingels, Harpoon Ventures, Hitachi Ventures, Kindred Ventures, MCJ, NRG Energy, Nucleation Capital, Perpetual VC, Tishman Speyer, and VamosVentures.
If Aalo can meet its aggressive deadline, it would defy a longstanding industry trend of extended timelines and frequent delays. Like many advanced nuclear startups, Aalo is relying on economies of scale to help control both construction costs and timeframes. The company states that if its approach is successful, it plans to build thousands of Aalo Pod power plants. Each pod would consist of five Aalo-1 reactors delivering heat to a single turbine to generate a total of fifty megawatts of electricity.
The startup also mentioned that an experimental data center will be constructed next to its Aalo-X prototype, a detail that appears more as a marketing tactic than a significant technological innovation.
Ultimately, Aalo states its aim is to deliver electricity at three cents per kilowatt-hour, a price that would make it competitive with new natural gas power plants and modern solar farms. The company has not provided a specific timeline for achieving this price point, a prudent decision given the nuclear industry’s history of unmet promises on cost.
Aalo is not the only nuclear startup making news this week. Yesterday, Kairos Power announced that the Tennessee Valley Authority has agreed to purchase fifty megawatts of generating capacity from its planned Hermes 2 power plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Google will use that power for its data centers.