What an Nventure! Nvidia joins Bill Gates’ nuclear party by investing in startup
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No, that’s not a spelling mistake or a terrible pun: Nventure is Nvidia’s venture capital arm, responsible for investing in many different start-ups, including various AI companies, biomedical research, and medical robotics, and now it’s venturing into nuclear energy.
Jensen’s crew is investing in Bill Gates’ TerraPower nuclear start-up, which is developing its own Small Modular Reactor (SMR) tech and a 345-megawatt plant in Wyoming alongside the US Department of Energy, scheduled to come online by 2030 according to The Register. Nventure is coughing up a cool $650 million for the project, and joins other investors like HD Hyundai.
Why is Nvidia investing in nuclear power?
Nvidia is investing in nuclear power for two reasons: firstly, the financial return that the investment could represent as the technology undergoes a bit of a renaissance, and secondly: to help meet their own power generation needs in the future.
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AI datacentres are being built by all the big boys in the AI space – crucial infrastructure to fuel the development of their AI tech – and these data centres are going to require a massive amount of power to operate. For example, AMD recently revealed that their zettascale supercomputer will need the equivalent to the power needed to run 375,000 homes in the US, which equates to around half a gigawatt. Realistically, nuclear power is the only way to meet this need in a cost-effective way.
Competing tech companies and their nuclear projects
Nvidia are actually fairly late to the nuclear power game. Most competing AI-focused tech companies already have some involvement.
- Microsoft: Bill Gates’ former company Microsoft has signed a deal with Constellation Energy to supply them exclusively from the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. The plant is due to be operational by 2028.
- Google: Has signed a deal with start-up Kairos Power to provide energy from seven SMRs, to go online in 2030.
- Amazon: Has chosen to sign agreements with three different nuclear energy companies: Energy Northwest (‘a consortium of public utility companies in Washington State’), X-energy (and SMR start-up), and Dominion Energy (a utility company with a plant in Virginia).
- Oracle: Has secured permits to build three SMRs to generate at least 1 gigawatts for its planned data centre.
- Meta: Is a bit behind the competition, but is in the markets for proposals to meet 1-4 gigawatts of its energy needs as of December 2024.
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