Nuclear startup Aalo Atomics raises $100M to build its first reactor by 2026
Nuclear power is having a moment in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street, and Aalo Atomics is the latest beneficiary. The company announced today that it has raised $100 million in Series B funding, with plans to switch on its first reactor by the summer of 2026 at the Idaho National Laboratory.
The round was led by Valor Equity Partners and included 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.
DOE Roots and Bold Timelines
Aalo traces its origins to the Department of Energy’s work on Marvel, a small modular reactor design developed and open sourced by the Idaho National Lab. Aalo’s CTO Yasir Arafat led Marvel’s design, and the startup credits it as inspiration for its own prototype. Aalo also received early development support through an Obama-era program to accelerate nuclear reactor development.
CEO Matt Loszak said in a LinkedIn post that the company is on track to activate its first reactor in 2026 — an ambitious goal for an industry notorious for delays.
Scaling with the “Aalo Pod”
Like many advanced nuclear startups, Aalo is betting on economies of scale to make nuclear cost-effective and faster to deploy. Its plan involves building Aalo Pod power plants, each consisting of five Aalo-1 reactors connected to a single turbine, producing 50 megawatts of electricity.
The company says its prototype, dubbed Aalo-X, will be accompanied by an “experimental” data center next door — a detail that may be as much about marketing as technology.
Ultimately, Aalo aims to deliver electricity at 3 cents per kilowatt-hour, putting it on par with new natural gas plants and today’s solar farms. However, the company has not set a firm timeline for hitting that price target.
A Hot Market for Nuclear Startups
Aalo joins a wave of nuclear startups attracting both Big Tech partnerships and venture funding. Just this week, Kairos Power announced that the Tennessee Valley Authority would purchase 50 megawatts of power from its planned Hermes 2 plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee — power that Google intends to use for its data centers.
If Aalo hits its 2026 milestone, it would stand out in an industry where ambitious timelines often slip. Whether its reactors become a template for thousands of “Pods” or another case study in nuclear overpromising will depend on how quickly it can turn capital into kilowatts.
