Valar Atomics, a startup building small modular nuclear reactors to power data centers, has raised $1 billion in a Series B round led by Sequoia Capital at a $6 billion post-money valuation.
According to Bloomberg, the company says the funding will help it move beyond demonstrating its small modular reactor technology. TechCrunch reports the round was led by Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire, and that it follows a development deal Valar signed with Nvidia in June.
The basic idea behind small modular reactors, or SMRs, is to shrink nuclear plants into standardized units that can be manufactured rather than custom-built on site. Valar's pitch is to aim that output squarely at data centers — the warehouse-scale computing facilities that train and run AI models.
That pairing explains the size of the check. AI computing consumes enormous and around-the-clock electricity, and the companies building it out have been hunting for power sources that don't depend on the weather or on grid connections that can take years to secure. Nuclear generation runs continuously, which makes it an appealing match on paper — though building reactors is famously slow, capital-intensive and heavily regulated, and a demonstration is a long way from a fleet of operating plants.
The Nvidia deal reported by TechCrunch is notable for the same reason: the dominant supplier of AI chips has an obvious interest in making sure there is somewhere to plug them in.
Why it matters: a $1 billion bet at a $6 billion valuation is a sign that investors now see electricity, not chips alone, as the binding constraint on how far and how fast AI can scale.