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Founders Fund, the venture capital firm co-founded by billionaire investor Peter Thiel, is backing a nuclear start-up aiming to produce the fuel used to power the latest generation of reactors, as artificial intelligence groups look to atomic power to meet their electricity needs.
The venture, which is at an early stage but is already staffed by nuclear industry veterans and SpaceX engineers, will seek to create a new production method for high-assay low-enriched uranium (Haleu), according to two people familiar with the matter.
Haleu is more powerful than standard nuclear fuel and is used in advanced reactors such as small modular reactors, which tech groups from Amazon to Microsoft hope can meet their power needs as they rapidly build AI-related data centres.
The Founders Fund incubation effort highlights the growing importance of nuclear power for the world’s largest technology companies, which need huge amounts of reliable, low-carbon electricity as they race to build AI infrastructure while sticking to their emissions targets.
In one of the biggest steps so far, Microsoft earlier this month announced a 20-year power supply deal with Constellation Energy that will involve reopening the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania.
Founders Fund’s start-up underlines how the tech sector sees not only the construction of new nuclear power plants but also support for the nuclear fuel supply chain as vital to meeting AI’s power needs.
Founders Fund declined to comment.
Enrichment and conversion suffered from an investment pullback since Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, as well as overreliance on Russia. Haleu is not widely available commercially, with only Russia and China possessing the infrastructure to produce large volumes of the fuel.
“Big Tech has made their intention clear in that next-generation nuclear is one of the only solutions to the growing power problem facing data centres,” said Nick Lawson, chief executive of Ocean Wall, an investment house that is bullish on uranium.
“The ambition of next-generation nuclear is being hindered by the lack of fuel supply.”
The enrichment venture is not the first foray into nuclear energy for Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and the first outside investor in Facebook.
He has backed nuclear fusion start-up Helion, while Founders Fund supported Transatomic Power, which attempted to develop a molten salt reactor technology before winding down in 2018.
It will also add to efforts led by Maryland-based Centrus Energy to kick-start Haleu production in the US. The company began producing Haleu from a demonstration plant last year.
One of the people said Founders Fund had committed funding to inject into the company, which it will receive once it has obtained approvals from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Department of Energy.