Austin Startup Ushers in the Second Atomic Age

Austin-based Aalo Atomics just raised a ~$100M Series B to build an experimental Aalo-X reactor and get a first plant online by 2027.

The second atomic age is here.

Over the next 5 years, U.S. data center demand is on track to double power consumption. We'll need roughly 80 GWe of new capacity, about 80 cities' worth of electricity.

Our current grid simply can't scale fast enough.

Nuclear is ~2M times as energy-dense as oil and gas. But for decades, safety concerns, long build times, and massive capex have kept it from being used at anything close to its full potential.

That's starting to change. Governments are pouring record levels of funding into next-gen nuclear and Aalo Atomics is leading the way.

Their bet: mass-production of reactors with a very different design than the last generation:

• Liquid metal coolant instead of water
• Uranium-zirconium hydride fuel
• A much smaller design

In fact, it's small enough to fit in your garage, but powerful enough to run a hyper-scale data center or a mid-size city. And it's designed to fail safely by default rather than "never fail."

If they're right, this design could push nuclear power under $0.03/kWh, and rewrite the cost structure of energy in the AI era.

$100M into an Austin nuclear startup tells you what big funds believe about the next decade: compute demand isn't slowing down, and the winning cities will be the ones that solve energy. Austin is quietly positioning itself to be one of them.