X-energy

X-energy was founded in 2009 by Kam Ghaffarian, pursuing advanced nuclear reactor technology as part of the broader wave of renewed private investment and government interest in next-generation nuclear power that has emerged over the past decade, driven by nuclear energy's potential to provide reliable, carbon-free electricity generation to complement the intermittent renewable energy sources like wind and solar that have grown substantially but cannot alone provide the continuous, reliable power generation that electric grids require, alongside growing electricity demand from data centers and broader economic activity that has renewed interest in nuclear power as a scalable clean energy source beyond renewables alone. The company's core reactor design, called the Xe-100, is a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor using helium gas rather than water as its primary coolant, and uses a distinctive fuel design called TRISO (tri-structural isotropic) particle fuel, in which small nuclear fuel particles are individually coated with multiple protective layers designed to contain radioactive fission products even under extreme accident conditions, an inherent safety design characteristic the company argues reduces the risk of dangerous fuel meltdown scenarios relative to some traditional nuclear reactor designs, while the reactor's smaller, modular design is intended to be manufactured largely in a factory setting and is intended to enable more standardized manufacturing and potentially shorter construction timelines than traditional large-scale nuclear projects X-energy has built a particularly significant relationship with Amazon, which announced a substantial investment and partnership with X-energy aimed at developing nuclear power capacity specifically to help meet Amazon's growing data center electricity demand, reflecting a broader emerging trend of major technology companies directly investing in and contracting for advanced nuclear power capacity specifically to help meet the substantial and rapidly growing electricity demands of AI computing infrastructure and data centers. The company has also received support through the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program. X-energy has raised very substantial funding from investors including Amazon, Ares Management, and the U.S. government, positioning itself as a well-funded advanced nuclear reactor company alongside competitors including TerraPower and Kairos Power.

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