Tech billionaire Bill Gates' nuclear startup raised $650 million in another round of funding from a group of investors, including Nvidia.
Tech billionaire Bill Gates' nuclear startup raised $650 million in another round of funding from a group of investors, including Nvidia.
A startup called TerraPower intends to use additional funds to continue developing an innovative nuclear reactor project being built in Wyoming, Bloomberg reports .
Thus, Nvidia’s venture capital arm, NVentures, joined the startup’s existing investors, Gates and HD Hyundai.
«As artificial intelligence continues to transform entire industries, nuclear power will become an even more important energy source to support these capabilities,» said NVentures CEO Mohamed Siddique.
Nvidia’s decision is explained, in part, by the fact that data centers and artificial intelligence require carbon-free electricity to power them.
TerraPower is building a 345-megawatt power plant on the site of a decommissioned coal-fired power plant in Wyoming. It began construction of the non-nuclear parts of the project a year ago and expects to receive federal approval to build the reactor in 2026.
TerraPower is building a sodium-cooled fast reactor. It was previously reported that the peak power of this power plant of 500 MW should provide electricity to 400,000 homes.
The nuclear power plant is scheduled to be commissioned around 2030. Interestingly, the launch could have taken place earlier, in 2028, but this would have required the use of fuel from Russia, which Gates considered unacceptable.
This is the only such project in the world, the main feature of which is the use of liquid sodium instead of water. In existing nuclear power plants, the reaction heats water, which in turn is used to generate electricity, while the new type of reactor uses liquid sodium as a coolant.
As previously reported by dev.ua, Google has signed an agreement with nuclear startup Kairos Power to build seven small reactors to provide electricity to its data centers.
At the same time, Meta recently invested in US nuclear power — the company signed a long-term agreement to supply clean energy, which will allow the Clinton Clean Energy Center to continue operating until at least 2047. This decision is aimed at ensuring electricity needs for the further development of artificial intelligence.
