Why Tech Giants Are Pouring Money Into Next-Generation Nuclear Reactors

A burgeoning renaissance for the green energy technology has reached Silicon Valley.

Nearly a month after Microsoft bet $16 billion on reviving the defunct Three Mile Island nuclear plant to power its energy-hungry data centers, Google and now Amazon are inking massive deals to finance the United States’ ambitious atomic revival plans.

On Wednesday morning, Amazon Web Services announced a megadeal with two utilities to fund the construction of next-generation nuclear plants near its server farms in Virginia and Washington.

Unlike its rivals’ recent deals, the tech giant isn’t just agreeing to buy nuclear-generated electricity. Amazon teamed up with billionaire Ken Griffin to pump $500 million into X-energy, a Maryland-based startup designing small modular reactors that are a fraction of the size of conventional units and use high-temperature gas as a coolant instead of water.

“Amazon and X-energy are poised to define the future of advanced nuclear energy in the commercial marketplace,” X-energy CEO J. Clay Sell said in a news release.

The investment mirrors Amazon’s purchase of a double-digit stake in Rivian around the same time the company ordered a fleet of the electric automaker’s battery-powered delivery trucks. Amazon has similarly big plans to scale its latest green gamble, promising to build 5 gigawatts ― equal to 5,000 megawatts ― of new nuclear power plants in the U.S. over the next 15 years using X-energy’s 80-megawatt reactors.