American nuclear energy companies are securing hundreds of millions of dollars in new investments following a series of executive orders aimed at boosting domestic nuclear power and reducing reliance on foreign sources.
TerraPower, founded by tech titan and philanthropist Bill Gates, announced a $650 million investment in part with NVentures, the venture capital arm of NVIDIA. The funding comes as TerraPower looks to launch the nation’s first commercial nuclear power plant.
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Earlier this year, President Donald Trump signed four executive orders aimed at accelerating the deployment of nuclear technologies in the U.S.
“What we’re trying to accomplish here is unshackling this industry from stifling regulations that have held it back for too long. This industry is ready to grow. It wants to run. It wants to innovate and there is a lot of capital available,” a senior Trump administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told FOX Business.
“What they need is for us to get out of the way and take key steps towards shoring up the supply chain,” the official added.
“The more nuclear that we can get into our energy mix, the lower your cost of living is going to be,” the official explained, adding that nuclear energy is one of the strongest and most reliable energy options.
“And people should not conceive of these as the reactors of the past. They are the reactors of the future, they are safe,” the senior Trump administration official added.
During his second term, Trump has placed energy and artificial intelligence dominance at the core of his economic and national security agenda.
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Oklo co-founder and CEO Jacob DeWitte said the nuclear energy startup lined up $460 million in funding in June.
DeWitte said Trump’s measures, which were signed in May, have driven “investors and the market to see that for the first time in decades, America is ready for nuclear energy.”
Additionally, nuclear energy tech startup Radiant announced in late May that it had secured an additional $165 million in funding, bringing the company’s total venture investment to $225 million.
Radiant, which was founded in 2020, is in the process of building and testing nuclear microreactors, a smaller and more flexible option compared to traditional nuclear power plants. Radiant hopes to deploy its microreactors to remote areas, military installations as well as disaster zones.
Doug Bernauer, founder and CEO of Radiant, said the new executive orders have “cleared the way for American leadership in nuclear innovation through common-sense regulation.”
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