AI Weekly Malaysia

TerraPower, founded by Bill Gates, plans to announce its first AI data center project this year, with construction expected to break ground in 2027. Its Natrium reactor design pairs nuclear generation with energy storage, allowing the reactor to run at full capacity (92.5% capacity factor) while storing excess output rather than ramping down — a key differentiator since existing reactors can only adjust output by about 5% per minute. Meta has already agreed to buy eight Natrium plants, though the data center customer for this project was not named.

Why: If you're planning AI infrastructure spend beyond 2027, nuclear-backed data center power with storage is becoming a real procurement option, not just speculation — Meta has already committed to eight plants. For founders and ML teams worried about power availability constraining GPU capacity, this signals that hyperscaler-scale energy deals are being locked in now, which could affect cloud pricing and availability years before these reactors come online.

Apollo Atomics closed a $26 million seed round (including $5M debt) to build a compact nuclear reactor by shrinking the steam generator to roughly human-size, enabling mass manufacturing and a reactor 40x smaller than conventional designs. The founders target 3 cents/kWh electricity by 2028, aiming to beat natural gas rather than just improve nuclear incrementally.

Why: Not actionable for this audience. This is deep-tech nuclear hardware with no current API, tool, or infrastructure decision a developer or founder can make today. The only distant relevance is that cheaper nuclear could eventually lower data-center energy costs for AI workloads, but that is speculative and years out.