Tech Goes Nuclear
Microsoft, Google, Amazon and other major tech companies are locking in contracts with nuclear startups to secure reliable power for AI data centers. The rationale is straightforward: AI infrastructure runs continuously, consumes enormous amounts of electricity, and needs stable baseload power that solar and wind can’t reliably provide without storage that doesn’t yet exist at sufficient scale. Nuclear, which had been commercially stagnant for decades, is suddenly the destination of serious capital.
This is one of the stranger second-order effects of the AI boom. The sector that spent the last decade disrupting everything in sight is now betting on a technology that was commercially stranded for thirty years and requires a decade to build. The irony is that it may actually work — because unlike utilities or governments, hyperscalers have the capital to move deals from paper to construction, and the urgency to actually want them to complete. If AI is what finally makes the economics of nuclear restart viable, that’s a genuinely unexpected outcome. Not necessarily a bad one.