A two-year-old nuclear startup just did something no American company has done before: ran an Nvidia AI chip directly off a compact nuclear reactor.
Valar Atomics Inc. demonstrated its microreactor producing live power for Nvidia’s Blackwell architecture on July 1, 2026, at a small data center in Utah. The milestone is the first known instance of a next-generation nuclear reactor supplying electricity directly to AI compute infrastructure in the US.
What Valar actually built
The reactor uses helium cooling instead of water, targeting near-zero water use.
Valar was founded in 2023 by Isaiah Taylor, who is 27 years old. The company’s reactor design, called the Ward250, is what was used in the demonstration. Valar is also among roughly 10 startups participating in a US Department of Energy pilot program aimed at demonstrating microreactor criticality, with a program deadline set around July 4, 2026.
