Valar Atomics Targets $6B Valuation

Valar Atomics is seeking to raise about $1 billion at a valuation near $6 billion, with Sequoia expected to lead the round, according to three sources familiar with the company. The Information first reported the discussions involving the three-year-old small modular reactor (SMR) startup.

The El Segundo, California-based company has already raised part of the proposed round at a lower valuation, the sources told TechCrunch. A Bloomberg report in March said Valar had raised $450 million, including $340 million in equity and $110 million in debt, at a $2 billion valuation.

Valar’s funding and nuclear technology

The financing may be structured across multiple installments and valuations. Such arrangements have become increasingly common during the AI-fueled fundraising boom, but they can obscure the prices investors actually paid for shares in the same company.

Sequoia and Valar Atomics declined to comment.

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Valar is developing helium-cooled, high-temperature gas reactors. SMRs are designed as factory-built, smaller power plants that could be cheaper and faster to deploy than traditional nuclear facilities. The company says it eventually plans to build hundreds of SMRs to supply data centers.

Earlier this month, Valar demonstrated that one of its reactors provided a small amount of power to an Nvidia AI chip. At the same time, Valar and Nvidia announced a partnership to explore nuclear energy for future AI data centers.

Nuclear power targets AI data centers

Data center electricity demand is projected to grow sharply over the next several years, while utilities in many regions are years away from adding enough generation capacity. That gap has increased interest in nuclear power, despite the industry’s history of cost overruns and regulatory delays.

Valar’s backers include Palmer Luckey, founder of Anduril, and Shyam Sankar, Palantir’s chief technology officer. Competitors pursuing similar opportunities include Kairos Power, TerraPower, which is backed by Bill Gates, and NuScale Power. NuScale is the only SMR developer with U.S. regulatory design approval; last year, it received approval for an upgraded, higher-output reactor design.

SMRs remain an emerging technology, however. While they are theoretically cheaper to manufacture than traditional reactors, it is still unclear how long deployment at industrial scale will take.

Valar has also taken an aggressive position against its regulator. Last year, the company joined several states and rival startups in suing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, arguing that the agency wrongly applies the same lengthy licensing process to small test reactors as it does to full-size commercial plants. The case remains unresolved, with both sides repeatedly pausing the litigation—suggesting that a settlement may be under discussion.

Valar was founded by Isaiah Taylor, who left high school at 16. The now-27-year-old founder has said he launched two startups before Valar and has highlighted that his great-grandfather was a nuclear physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project.