Valar Atomics

Rod Adams

@Atomicrod

The specific accomplishments from the Reactor Pilot Program are exciting and worth celebrating. Big congratulations to @DOE_NE1 @INL @AntaresNuclear @valaratomics @DeployableE and @AaloAtomics BUT The most important part of the program's success is the exercise that it provided to the whole process of reviewing and approving research and development/pilot scale reactors that can enable effective iteration. Many hard tech fields have proven the importance of building minimum viable products (MVP), capturing information from early models and using that information to produce the next versions. This cycle often must be repeated several times before achieving a truly commercial and scalable product. The old paradigm in nuclear licensing prevented iteration and almost completely prevented any innovation. (You cannot iterate when it takes 42 months and 14,000 pages to get a design certification, especially when completing that process doesn't even allow construction to begin.) We have a new paradigm that is closer to the far more successful paradigm that was in place prior to 1970. More details and thoughts are available at the link in the comments. @NRCgov

Jason Carman

@jasonjoyride

On episode 74 of S3, we visit @valaratomics, the first startup in history to generate nuclear power, all while beating the July 4th deadline. In just 3 years, @isaiah_p_taylor went from pitching the idea on an Apple note to the reactor generating electricity, and now @nvidia is betting on that same reactor to power its next AI data center.

Nuclear Hazelnut 👷🏻‍♀️

@NuclearHazelnut

Three microreactors. 3 criticality milestones. Before July 4 🇺🇸⚛️ Antares Nuclear Valar Atomics Deployable Energy The DOE has officially met its ambitious goal of having 3 advanced microreactors achieve criticality before Independence Day!

JKash 🍊MAGA Queen

@JKash000

During a July 24, 2026 White House event President Trump celebrated four companies—Antares Nuclear, Valar Atomics, Deployable Energy, and Aalo Atomics—whose advanced microreactors achieved zero-power criticality under a DOE Reactor Pilot Program launched via executive order. These privately developed designs, using TRISO fuel and non-light-water cooling like sodium heat pipes or helium, represent the first new U.S. advanced reactor criticalities in decades, with timelines targeting initial electricity output in 2027 and deployments for data centers and military use in 2028. The milestone accelerates small reactor tech to meet surging power demand from AI infrastructure, though the reactors have not yet produced grid electricity and full commercialization depends on further licensing and scaling.

John Wagner

@john_c_wagner

Honored to join @POTUS at the @WhiteHouse today to celebrate a historic milestone: four reactor criticalities — from @AntaresNuclear, @valaratomics, @DeployableE, and @AaloAtomics — meeting the July 4, 2026 goal set out in the President's executive orders on #NuclearReactor testing reform, under the leadership of @ENERGY @SecretaryWright. Four different companies. Four different technologies. One national result: advanced #nuclear is no longer just a design on paper — it's happened. Three of these four criticalities happened on our site, and none of it happens without @INL staff across nearly every part of the lab, who went above and beyond to get it done. As I shared in the Oval Office today, in all my years, I have never seen government, private industry and the laboratories working together this effectively. "Now America is building again, America is dreaming again, and we're leading the world in pioneering the next generation of nuclear power." - President Trump "America is going to be back as the leader in the nuclear space in large reactors and in next-generation small reactors. [President Trump] set a bold goal. It's been exceeded." - Department of Energy Secretary Wright This is the beginning of the Golden Era of Nuclear Energy. Onward to 400 gigawatts by 2050.

Toma

@Toma_web3

A 27-year-old built a working nuclear reactor. @sequoia is now reportedly circling it with a billion-dollar check. The company is @valaratomics. Three years old. In talks to raise at a $6 billion valuation this week, up from $2 billion back in March. That's roughly triple in four months, for a company most people had never heard of before this year. What the company actually built: → The Ward250, a factory-built microreactor cooled with pressurized helium instead of water → On June 18, it became the first startup-built reactor in US history to reach criticality, a real, self-sustaining nuclear reaction, outside a government lab → On July 1 in Orangeville, Utah, that same reactor sent live power into an @nvidia Blackwell chip, running at roughly 37% output, the first time nuclear power has fed AI compute directly on American soil → Nvidia and Valar are now studying a 30-megawatt data center design built around the reactor, aimed at pulling zero water from the local grid Why the money is moving this fast: )- Data center electricity demand is projected to more than triple by 2028 )- A standard grid interconnection takes years in most of the US right now )- Existing nuclear capacity is already spoken for by the largest tech companies )- The current grid simply isn't built for what AI training and inference are asking of it Who's actually backing it: Anduril founder Palmer Luckey, Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar, and now reportedly Sequoia leading the new round. Not a single dedicated climate fund anywhere on that list. For forty years, nuclear power was a fight that happened in policy hearings and permitting offices. This month, it quietly became a line item in the AI supply chain, priced by the same people who fund AI labs. And the person who built the reactor is younger than most Series A associates.

Isaiah Taylor

Founder & CEO

Self-taught coder and high-school dropout (born 1999), the great-grandson of a Manhattan Project physicist, who founded Valar Atomics in 2023 to mass-manufacture nuclear reactors.