Sprawling data centers, the backbone of modern digital infrastructure, consume vast amounts of electricity to process, store, and manage the data generated by billions of users daily, driving companies to explore nuclear energy as a solution.
The holy trinity of the tech world, Google, Amazon and Microsoft, have made their moves on incorporating nuclear energy into their business agendas. Amid rising demand for clean energy to power data centers and drive AI innovation, new long-term partnerships with nuclear energy startups have been unveiled.
Last month saw a significant investment from Amazon in nuclear power startup X-energy, leading a Series C-1 funding round of approximately $500 million. Based in Rockville, Maryland, X-energy specializes in developing advanced small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) for clean energy generation.
Announced on Oct.16, Citadel Founder and CEO Ken Griffin, affiliates of Ares Management Corporation (“Ares”), NGP, and the University of Michigan joined Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund in backing X-energy in the financing round.
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Amazon and X-energy’s collaboration is set to bring more than 5 gigawatts of new power projects online across the United States by 2039, according to X-energy’s statement. This represents the largest commercial deployment target of SMRs to date.
SMRs are being chosen over traditional installations, which are massive and can take years to build, due to their ability to lower cost and speed up the construction of nuclear power plants.
Amazon’s investment solidifies X-energy’s leading role in commercializing SMR technology to revolutionize the nuclear industry, the company said in a statement.
This is just one among the three nuclear energy projects Amazon is partaking in. The retail giant pledged a sustainability goal of going carbon-free by 2040 which led to the search for alternative energy sources. With a proven decades-long record of being a reliable energy source, nuclear power has become the go-to for establishing safe carbon-free energy for communities around the world, Amazon shared in a blog.
Earlier this year, in an effort to reach 100% renewable energy by 2025—part of the multinational’s net-zero carbon goal, Amazon located its data center facility to subsidiary Amazon Web Services (AWS) next to Talen Energy’s nuclear facility in Pennsylvania. The company stated that this will directly power their data centers with carbon-free energy, and helps preserve the existing reactor.
Without straying from the sustainability path, Amazon has made an agreement with Washington’s Energy Northwest, in addition to their investment in X-energy.
A public power agency leading in nuclear technologies, Energy Northwest will be developing four advanced SMRs which are expected to generate enough energy to power more than 770,000 U.S. homes. The SMRs will be constructed, owned and operated by Energy Northwest, enabled by Amazon due to the deal. The project is designed to meet the forecasted energy needs of the Pacific Northwest beginning in the early 2030s.
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Amazon signed another deal with Virginia’s utility company Dominion Energy, agreeing to “explore the development of at least 300 megawatts” worth of SMRs near the North Anna Nuclear Generating Station, located between Washington, D.C., and Richmond, Virginia.
Mid-October saw another tech behemoth pursue nuclear power: Google signed the “world’s first corporate agreement” with nuclear energy startup Kairos Power to build seven small reactors to supply electricity to its data centers.
The agreement promises to produce up to 500 megawatts of carbon-free power to U.S. electricity grids, and help communities benefit from clean and affordable nuclear power. The initial phase of this project is intended to come online by 2030. In the case of Kairos, the technology is taken a step further by cooling the reactor not with water but with molten salts of lithium fluoride and beryllium fluoride.
Tech powerhouse Microsoft announced on Sept. 20 a deal with Constellation Energy to revive the nuclear power plant, Three Mile Island. Located in Middletown, Pennsylvania, the power plant was the site of one of the worst commercial nuclear accidents in U.S. history. With Microsoft’s new power purchase agreement which will span 20 years, its cloud computing and AI data centers will be fueled by the clean and carbon-free electricity produced by the nuclear plant.
For companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, the renewed interest in nuclear energy stems from the immense energy demands of AI and data centers, which are among the largest consumers of power.
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Their sprawling data centers, the backbone of modern digital infrastructure, consume immense amounts of electricity to process, store, and manage the vast amounts of data generated by billions of users daily. The rising demand for cloud computing, AI-driven applications, and 24/7 online services has significantly increased their energy needs.
“AI is really power hungry. A single query with ChatGPT uses about ten times more power than a Google search. With over 100 million users, there just isn’t enough power, whether in the U.S. or globally, to sustain this kind of growth,” AI regulation expert Sanjay Puri told The American Bazaar.
Balancing this rising demand with their ambitious climate and sustainability targets has driven these tech giants to explore alternative energy sources. Nuclear energy, alongside wind and solar, could be essential for delivering the large-scale renewable power they require.
“To keep up, we’re seeing investment not only in AI innovation but also in infrastructure—like nuclear energy and advanced cooling systems for data centers,” Puri, founder of the nonprofit Regulating AI, added.
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