Nuclear microreactor startup Aalo Atomics has successfully raised $100 million as part of a Series B fundraise, with backing from Valor Equity and NRG Energy, amongst others.

Following the funding round, the Austin, Texas-based firm has now raised more than $136 million.

According to the company, the additional capital will enable it to finish construction of its first reactor - dubbed Aalo-X - next summer at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL). The company has one of the most aggressive deadlines for an advanced nuclear firm, with most other companies with criticality dates closer to the end of the decade.

Founded back in 2021, Aalo is currently developing its flagship 50MW microreactor, dubbed the Aalo pod. The reactor is comprised of five 10MWe reactors driving a single turbine. It is sodium and air-cooled, meaning it requires no external water source. The start-up sees its modular design as its biggest strength, contending that if it is able to prove its approach, it will be able to build thousands of Aalo Pod power plants, delivering gigawatts of energy.

The company ultimately aims to achieve a price point of three cents per kWh, which would align with the cost of building a new natural gas or solar plant. However, Aalo has yet to disclose when it expects to reach this price point.

The company was recently selected as one of the 11 companies that will participate in the US Department of Energy’s Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program, aiming to demonstrate cold criticality for advanced nuclear deployment.

“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. 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,” said Matt Loszak, CEO at Aalo.

Aalo has already finished the build-out of its 40,000 square foot (3,716 sqm) pilot factory and its full-scale non-nuclear prototype.

While the company has yet to sign a deal with a data center, it has explicitly targeted the sector as a crucial offtaker moving forward.

The company is targeting the data center as a crucial future offtaker for its microreactor. According to the company, part of the experimental plant will be demonstrating the ability to power a colocated data center built alongside it. While plans for the data center have yet to be revealed, DCD understands that Aalo sees colocation as a key part of its model.

According to Loszak, to gain a market share in the data center sector, Aalo aims to “build Aalo-X to prove product-market fit: speed, reliability, and economics for data centers. Then build thousands of Aalo Pods (five Aalo-1 reactors and one turbine per Pod), to power data centers at scale.”

Aalo is the latest in a long line of advanced nuclear reactor firms seeking to partner with the data center sector. Last week, Equinix signed one of the biggest deals to date, announcing three major agreements with advanced nuclear developers that together could provide up to 774MWe of power.

In addition, over the past year, Amazon, Google, Data4, Oracle, Switch, and Endeavour have all signed agreements with advanced nuclear developers.