Last Energy Looks To Power Big Tech's Data Centers

Since the 1970s nuclear energy has stagnated in the US.

The reason being that the nuclear energy industry pivoted to selling fear of nuclear power (safety equipment), and away from nuclear power itself. On top of that, regulatory requirements in the US made nuclear power plants 10x more expensive to build.

Nuclear energy looked to be on its way out.

But with the sudden advancements in AI, the need for massive amounts of energy seems to be bringing the nuclear energy industry back to life.

Austin is home to that revival with the recent $100M Series C funding round of the nuclear energy startup, Last Energy.

Known as "the least innovative nuclear energy company out there," their focus isn't on improving nuclear energy technology itself, but rather mass manufacturing it.

Led by Bret Kuglemass, they aim to build smaller with their 20MW electric standard PWR.

They get around the high regulation costs by prototyping in the US, but building in the UK, or whomever the highest bidder ends up being.

Pulling techniques from:

• offshore oil & gas
• airplane manufacturing
• automotive manufacturing

to drive the price per mega watt hour to $2 for heat and $5 for electricity within the next 15 years.

If AI is the gold rush, Last Energy is trying to build the nuclear shovels.

With customers like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, all looking for cost efficient ways to power their data centers, the signal is clear for Austin founders: the city is looking to build the physical infrastructure needed to power the next wave of compute.