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amazon buys a stake in X-energy, the American nuclear developer, as part of a collaboration with the company and with the aim of deploying small modular reactors (known as SMR) for provide low carbon electricity and power your data centers.
X-energy said Amazon agreed to back a $500 million fundraising, which would help the company finance the development and licensing of its new generation of SMRswhich are more efficient than large-scale nuclear reactors.
Ken Griffin, founder and CEO of Citadel, Ares Management Corporation, private equity firm NGP and the University of Michigan also participated in the X-energy fundraiser.
X-energy did not disclose the size of the stake Amazon acquired, but said that the technology group would occupy two places on the company’s board of directors. Amazon’s equity investment in X-energy is part of a broader effort by the tech giant into nuclear energy.
Amazon said that is supporting an SMR project in Washington, his home statewhich will be built by and owned by Energy Northwest, a state utility consortium. It also signed an agreement with utility Dominion Energy to explore the development of an SMR project near Dominion’s existing North Anna nuclear power plant in Virginia.
Amazon and X-energy plan to put more than 5 gigawatts of SMR-generated power online in 2039, enough to supply 4 million homes, according to the companies.
Amazon’s investment is the latest of a series of ads from technology groups supporting nuclear projectsas they rush to source low-carbon energy that doesn’t threaten their climate commitments.
X-energy, which is backed by chemical industry giant Dow, developed a reactor that uses helium gas as coolant instead of water to divert heat from the core. Each of its SMR
The first SMR Xe-100 is being developed at a Dow manufacturing plant on the Texas Gulf Coast, with financial support from the US government.
The US government is investing billions of dollars in companies seeking to manufacture SMRs, which can be built in factories and assembled on site, in order to reduce costs and accelerate plant construction. But the increase in energy demand in the US, due to the deployment of artificial intelligence data centers, causes the technology sector to finance some nuclear projects, boosting the industry.
Amazon’s vice president of global data centers, Kevin Miller, said that X-energy technology would help to the company to achieve your climate commitment to be net zero by 2040.
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