Industrial cooling towers at dusk with amber-tinted sky, conveying the scale of large power generation infrastructure
Modular Fission for AI Infrastructure

AI-optimized compact fission for data center baseload

Applied Atomics designs modular fission plants sized for direct campus connection, targeting 4 to 12 MW of carbon-free baseload power per unit without grid dependency.

The Grid Cannot Follow AI Demand

The power infrastructure the AI era needs does not exist yet

Data centers running GPU clusters at capacity need firm, dispatchable power around the clock. Renewables are intermittent. Grid interconnection queues stretch years. The solution is generation co-located with the load.

4.5x Projected growth in U.S. data center power demand by 2030, per Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimates
5+ yr Typical grid interconnection queue wait times for large new loads in constrained regions, based on FERC queue data
<40% Average capacity factor for utility-scale solar and wind generation, making them unreliable as sole baseload sources for 24/7 compute
Our Approach

Three engineering principles, one power solution

Compact fission designed around the operational reality of data center infrastructure, not adapted from utility-scale thinking.

Compact Scale

Each unit designed for a 3 to 5 acre siting footprint. Multiple units stack to match campus load growth. No massive exclusion zones, no utility-scale land requirements.

AI-Managed Dispatch

Our control layer reads your data center load curve in real time and adjusts reactor output accordingly. The plant follows your workload, not a fixed generation schedule.

Direct Connection

Plant-to-switchgear integration eliminates transmission line losses and grid price exposure. Your power generation and your compute load share a campus, not a multi-hundred-mile transmission path.

Technology

Engineered from the fuel cycle up

Applied Atomics is not retrofitting an existing reactor design. We are building a compact pressurized fission system optimized for the load characteristics of co-located GPU compute: frequent partial-load states, high capacity factor requirements, and demand for rapid dispatch response under AI workload variation.

Explore the technology
Abstract cutaway schematic view of compact modular reactor pressure vessel and heat exchanger system, showing primary cooling loop architecture
Who We Serve

Built for two buyer categories

We focus on buyers with specific power quality requirements that the grid cannot reliably provide.

Data Center Operators

GPU compute at scale demands 24/7 firm power

AI training and inference clusters cannot tolerate intermittency. A large-scale GPU deployment at full utilization needs baseload power as reliable as the compute fabric itself. Our direct-connection units are designed specifically for hyperscale and wholesale colocation developers planning new campus capacity who cannot wait years for grid interconnection.

4 to 12 MW per unit, designed for stacking
Campus-direct switchgear integration
Capacity factor design goal exceeds 90%
Industrial Power Buyers

Grid independence for energy-intensive manufacturing

Energy-intensive industrial facilities face the same grid constraints as data centers: long interconnection wait times, transmission congestion pricing, and reliability requirements that renewable-only portfolios cannot guarantee. Our compact units provide a path to on-site generation that does not depend on weather or commodity market prices for consistent output.

Long-term take-or-pay power purchase structure
Process heat co-generation potential
Footprint compatible with existing industrial sites
Why Applied Atomics

Four things we do that others don't

01

AI dispatch, not manual control

Standard nuclear operates at constant output because varying a reactor manually is slow and imprecise. Our AI control layer enables the plant to follow a dynamic load curve, matching output to your actual demand hour by hour without operator intervention.

02

Modular siting at data center scale

We designed the physical plant for the land footprint that data center campus developers actually work with. Not a gigawatt plant requiring its own transmission infrastructure, but a compact unit that fits within the same acreage conversation as a large cooling system.

03

Direct connection economics

When the generator is on campus, you eliminate transmission losses, eliminate grid interconnection costs, and eliminate the commodity price exposure that makes long-run power cost projections unreliable. We price as a long-term power purchase agreement, not a utility bill.

04

Nuclear engineers who understand DC loads

The Applied Atomics team came to this problem from both directions: nuclear systems design and the operational power requirements of large-scale compute infrastructure. We are not nuclear engineers who added a data center slide to a slide deck. The design started from the load, not the reactor.

Early Partner Conversations

What infrastructure buyers are telling us

From our early design partner engagement program with data center and industrial power buyers.

The interconnection queue problem is real and it is getting worse. We have three campus expansion projects where the power timeline is the constraint, not the construction timeline. A co-located generation option that doesn't depend on the queue is genuinely valuable if the technology delivers.

Director of Site Infrastructure, hyperscale colocation developer. From our early design partner engagement program.

We looked at large-scale solar plus storage for our new manufacturing facility. The capacity factor numbers don't work for our load profile. If compact fission can actually hit the dispatch response specs they're targeting, the economics compare favorably to a gas turbine on a 20-year horizon.

VP of Engineering, regional wholesale power buyer. From preliminary technical discussions with our team.

Built by nuclear engineers and AI systems researchers who saw the gap before the market did.

Meet the team

Power your campus without the grid

We are in preliminary discussions with data center developers and industrial power buyers planning new capacity. If the interconnection queue is your constraint, reach out.

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