Aalo Atomics Raises $100M for Innovative Microreactor and Data Center Development

Nuclear startups are increasingly piquing the interest of hyperscalers and drawing substantial investments. Aalo Atomics has announced today that it has successfully raised $100 million in a Series B funding round.

According to CEO Matt Loszak’s LinkedIn update, the company aims to launch its first reactor by the summer of 2026. This facility will be located within the Idaho National Laboratory grounds.

Aalo—distinct from a now-defunct furniture company—may be considered a quasi-spinout from the Department of Energy lab, which created and open-sourced a small modular reactor design called Marvel. The startup’s CTO, Yasir Arafat, previously led the design of Marvel, which Aalo asserts has “inspired” its prototype. Furthermore, Aalo received development support from the Idaho National Lab as part of an initiative by the Obama administration aimed at accelerating nuclear reactor innovation.

The Series B round was led by Valor Equity Partners, with participation from 50Y, Alumni Ventures, Crescent Enterprises, Crosscut, Fine Structure Ventures, Gaingels, Harpoon Ventures, Hitachi Ventures, Kindred Ventures, MCJ, NRG Energy, Nucleation Capital, Perpetual VC, Tishman Speyer, and VamosVentures.

If Aalo can stick to its ambitious schedule, it would break a long-standing tradition in the nuclear industry, which is often plagued by lengthy timelines and setbacks.

Like many innovative nuclear startups, Aalo aims to utilize economies of scale to reduce both costs and construction timeframes. If successful, the company plans to build thousands of Aalo Pod power plants, each consisting of five Aalo-1 reactors supplying heat to a single turbine, collectively generating 50 megawatts of electricity.

The startup also mentions that the Aalo-X prototype will include an “experimental” data center nearby—a detail that appears to lean more towards marketing rather than substantive technological innovation.

Ultimately, Aalo targets a price of 3 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity, a competitive rate against existing natural gas plants and new solar farms. However, the startup has not provided a timeline to achieve this pricing— a wise choice considering the historical difficulties within the nuclear sector.

Aalo is not the only nuclear startup making news this week. Just yesterday, Kairos revealed that the Tennessee Valley Authority has agreed to purchase 50 megawatts of output from its upcoming Hermes 2 power plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, with Google planning to utilize that power for its data centers.

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