Nuclear startup Antares announced on Tuesday that it has raised ninety-six million dollars in Series B funding to advance its small modular reactor design. The funding round was led by Shine Capital and included participation from Alt Capital, Caffeinated, FiftyThree Stations, Industrious, and others. It consists of seventy-one million dollars in equity and twenty-five million dollars in debt.
Antares is targeting commercial, defense, and space-based applications with its R1 microreactor. The reactor is designed to produce between one hundred kilowatts and one megawatt of electricity. Its design utilizes TRISO fuel, which involves spheres of carbon- and ceramic-coated uranium embedded in graphite.
This startup is among several companies benefiting from a renewed interest in nuclear power over the last six months. Last week, Amazon-backed X-energy reported raising a seven hundred million dollar Series D round, following an upsized seven hundred million dollar Series C that closed in February. That company is also designing a reactor around TRISO fuel.
In September, Deep Fission went public in a thirty million dollar reverse merger after previously struggling to raise money as recently as April. In August, Aalo Atomics raised one hundred million dollars to build a demonstration data center powered by a microreactor. In June, Nvidia contributed to a six hundred fifty million dollar round for TerraPower, a small modular reactor startup backed by Bill Gates.
Large-scale nuclear plants are also experiencing a resurgence. Earlier this month, Microsoft partner Constellation Energy received a one billion dollar loan from the Department of Energy to restart a reactor at Three Mile Island by 2028. That refurbishment project is expected to cost one point six billion dollars for the reactor idled in 2019.
In October, Google said it would work with NextEra Energy to reopen a nuclear power plant in Iowa that was damaged during a torrential downpour in 2020. Earlier this summer, Amazon purchased one point ninety-two gigawatts of generating capacity from a Talen Energy nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. Also in June, Meta said it would buy the clean energy attributes from a Constellation Energy nuclear power plant in Illinois.
While large nuclear projects have been major beneficiaries, the current administration is bullish on small nuclear’s potential to revive the industry’s fortunes in the coming decade. In August, Antares was named one of eleven participants in the Department of Energy’s reactor pilot program. The program aims to have at least three of those reactors begin operation by July 4, 2026, a timeline significantly faster than the nuclear industry typically experiences.
Antares has stated it aims to demonstrate its reactor for the Department of Energy next year and is planning to activate its full-power reactor sometime in 2027.