Valar Atomics, a start-up builder of modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) – small, factory-built power plants designed to be cheaper and faster to deploy than conventional reactors – is in talks to raise a new round of funding, according to three sources familiar with the company. The three-year-old company is seeking a valuation of about $6 billion, and Sequoia is expected to lead the deal, the people said.
The Information was the first to report the funding talks, including that the El Segundo, California-based startup is raising a $1 billion round.
Part of that capital was previously raised at a lower rate, the people told TechCrunch. Specifically, Valar raised $450 million — including $340 million in equity and $110 million in debt — at a $2 billion valuation, according to a Bloomberg report in March.
Deals structured in multiple installments at varying valuations, executed periodically at different times, are increasingly common in today’s AI-powered fundraising landscape. These agreements can create the impression that a large sum of money was invested in a single, uniform measure. In fact, investors in the same round can end up paying different amounts for the same company — a distinction that’s more important than ever as outsiders try to compare startups in the red against one another.
Sequoia and Valar Atomics declined to comment.
Earlier this month, the company showed that its nuclear reactor provided less power to the Nvidia AI chip. At the same time as that proof-of-concept demonstration, Valar and Nvidia announced a partnership to test the development of nuclear power to power the AI data centers of the future.
The rise of the Valar plays against a lack of wider demand. Data center electricity needs are expected to grow significantly over the next few years, and utilities in many regions are still years away from adding enough new capacity. That space has turned nuclear power — long plagued by cost overruns and regulatory hurdles — into one of the most watched corners of AI infrastructure development.
Valar counts Palmer Luckey, founder of Anduril, and Shyam Sankar, chief technology officer of Palantir, among its backers. Others chasing the opportunity include Kairos Power and TerraPower (backed by Bill Gates), which are building next-generation reactors aimed at technology and industrial customers, and NuScale Power, the only SMR developer with US regulatory design approval. (Last year, it won approval for an advanced, high-output reactor design.)
Valar technology is based on a helium-cooled, high-temperature rector gas. The company says it eventually plans to build hundreds of SMRs to power data centers. But while SMRs are supposedly cheaper to manufacture than conventional reactors, the technology is still in its infancy and it’s not entirely clear how long it will take to be deployed on an industrial scale.
In the background, the Valar took an aggressive legal stance toward their commander. Last year, it joined several states and its rivals in suing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, arguing that the agency improperly uses a lengthy licensing process for small test reactors that it uses for full-size commercial plants. (The case has not been settled, and both sides have temporarily suspended the proceedings, suggesting that some sort of settlement is in the works.)
The company was founded by Isaiah Taylor, who dropped out of high school at the age of 16. The 27-year-old said he launched two startups before Valar and proudly shared that his grandfather worked as a nuclear physicist on the Manhattan Project.
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