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Nuclear startup Antares said Tuesday it has raised $96 million in Series B funding as it pursues its small modular reactor design.<\/p>\n
The round, which was led by Shine Capital with participation from Alt Capital, Caffeinated, FiftyThree Stations, Industrious, and others, consists of $71 million in equity and $25 million in debt.<\/p>\n
Antares<\/a> says it is targeting commercial, defense, and space-based applications with its R1 microreactor, which will produce between 100 kilowatts to 1 megawatt of electricity. The design uses TRISO fuel, which in Antares case is spheres of carbon- and ceramic-coated uranium embedded in graphite.<\/p>\n The startup is one of several companies that have benefitted recently from renewed interest in nuclear power over the last six months.<\/p>\n Last week, Amazon-backed<\/a> X-energy said it had raised a $700 million Series D round<\/a>, which came on the heels of an upsized $700 million Series C that closed in February. The company is also designing a reactor around TRISO fuel. Deep Fission, which had struggled to raise money as recently as April, went public in a $30 million reverse merger<\/a> in September.\u00a0<\/p>\n Aalo Atomics raised $100 million<\/a> in August to build a demonstration data center powered by a microreactor, and in June, Nvidia contributed to a $650 million round<\/a> for TerraPower, a small modular reactor startup also backed by Bill Gates.<\/p>\n Big nuclear plants have been given a second chance, too.<\/p>\n Techcrunch event<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco<\/span> Earlier this month, Microsoft partner Constellation Energy received a $1 billion loan<\/a> from the Department of Energy to restart a reactor at Three Mile Island by 2028. That project is expected to cost $1.6 billion to refurbished the reactor that was idled in 2019. In October, Google said it would work with NextEra Energy to reopen a nuclear power plant<\/a> in Iowa that was damaged during a torrential downpour in 2020.<\/p>\n Earlier this summer, Amazon bought 1.92 gigawatts<\/a> of generating capacity from a Talen Energy nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. Meta also said in June it would buy the clean energy attributes<\/a> from a Constellation Energy nuclear power plant in Illinois.<\/p>\n And while big nuclear has been a major beneficiary, the Trump administration is bullish on small nuclear\u2019s potential to revive the industry\u2019s fortunes in the coming decade. <\/p>\n In August, Antares was named one of 11 participants in the Department of Energy\u2019s reactor pilot program, which aims to have at least three of those begin operation by July 4, 2026, a timeline that\u2019s significantly faster than the nuclear industry is accustomed to.<\/p>\n Antares has said it aims to demonstrate its reactor for the DOE next year, and is planning to turn on its full-power reactor sometime in 2027.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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