Aalo Atomics, an Austin-based advanced nuclear firm, has announced plans to build the first-ever co-located nuclear reactor and data center. The company has secured $100 million in new capital and regulatory support to complete its 10 MWe Aalo-X reactor project at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). The funding round was led by Valor Equity Partners and included notable participants such as Hitachi Ventures, NRG, and Fine Structure Ventures.
This brings Aalo’s total capital to over $136 million. Matt Loszak, CEO and co-founder of Aalo Atomics, said, “This could be the first advanced nuclear power plant to turn on in the US in decades.” The company plans to achieve “cold criticality,” the first phase of starting up a nuclear reactor, by July 2026. Aalo aims to build an experimental data center directly alongside the Aalo-X reactor.
“The Aalo-X—the X stands for experimental—could actually be the world’s first co-located and co-built nuclear-planted data center,” Loszak explained. The company’s goal is to prove that its factory-built reactors are a fast, reliable, and cost-effective power solution for data centers and other industries.
Nuclear-backed data center effort
While data centers have previously been located near existing nuclear plants, Aalo’s approach marks the first time the two facilities will be built together, creating unique efficiencies. Aalo has gone from initial hiring to constructing a full-scale non-nuclear prototype at its 40,000-square-foot pilot factory in less than two years. The company emphasized that, in a world increasingly accepting of nuclear energy, the main challenge remains the perceived slow pace of development.
The Aalo-X reactor is just the first step in a broader master plan. The company plans to demonstrate its technology’s effectiveness for the data center market and follow this up by expanding into municipal utilities and industrial heat. Future developments include a next-generation reactor ten times more powerful, targeting a goal of 3 cents per kilowatt-hour.
Earlier this year, Aalo unveiled its fully modular reactor design, dubbed the Aalo Pod. The Aalo Pod is a 50MWe reactor that can scale from hundreds of megawatts to thousands as the demand for energy grows. Aalo Atomics’ pioneering project could set a new standard for integrating nuclear power with data center operations, potentially reshaping the energy landscape.