In 2015, the U.S. Department of Energy included X-energy in its Advanced Reactor Concepts program. When the DOE established the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program in 2020, in which the federal government took on half the cost of building a participating company’s first reactor, X-energy was one of the first participants. While X-energy said it hasn’t released price projections for each project, the company disclosed to the Securities and Exchange Commission that the 50/50 cost-share agreement with the DOE covered a total estimated cost of up to $2.4 billion.
In 2022, X-energy announced Dow as its first commercial offtaker for the Texas project. Two years later, when the artificial intelligence boom spurred tech giants to sign a series of deals with nuclear startups, Amazon placed its bet on X-energy, vowing to help finance construction of 5 gigawatts of reactors through deals to buy power for its data centers. The company took an equity stake in X-energy, which went public on April 24 on the Nasdaq composite.
Amazon is now providing financing for the construction of X-energy’s second project, a multiphase expansion of an existing nuclear-energy complex in Washington state operated by the public utility Energy Northwest. Depending on the utility’s willingness to buy the units, the startup aims to eventually build up to a dozen of its Xe-100 reactors at the site.
