Austin, Texas-based Aalo was named recently by the US Department of Energy as one of 11 advanced reactor projects initially selected for support through its Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program, which aims to see at least three of them achieve criticality in less than one year from now.
It has now announced the closure of USD100 million in Series B funding led by Valor Equity Partners with participation from new and existing investors including Fine Structure Ventures, Hitachi Ventures, NRG Energy, Vamos Ventures, Tishman Speyer, Kindred Ventures, 50Y, Harpoon Ventures, Crescent Enterprises, Crosscut, Alumni Ventures, MCJ, Gaingels, and Nucleation Capital.
Aalo’s flagship product is the Aalo Pod, a 50 MWe XMR (Extra Modular Reactor) power plant it says is purpose-built for data centres. Each Aalo Pod contains five fully modular sodium-cooled Aalo-1 reactors, using low-enriched uranium fuel. With a small physical footprint and no need for external water sources, the Aalo Pod is easy to co-locate on-site with the data centres, the company says, and the technology can scale “seamlessly” to gigawatts.
“We now have the capital to build our first nuclear power plant, the Aalo-X, which we’re aiming to bring to zero-power criticality next summer,” CEO Matt Loszak on the company’s website. “This could be the first advanced nuclear power plant to turn on in the US in decades. This is not just a test reactor, but rather a full plant that will produce electricity.
“And there’s one more thing that makes this special: We’re planning to put an experimental data centre right next to it. This will be the first time a nuclear plant and data centre are built together, and will act as a demonstration of something we’ll see a lot more of at GW scale thereafter.”
The company, which was founded in 2023, says it will use its new financing to double the size of its team, growing from roughly 60 employees, with a focus on acquiring premium engineering and manufacturing talent.
