US-based startup Blue Energy Global raised $380 million to accelerate development of its first power plant and a fleet of small, prefabricated nuclear reactors intended to power energy-hungry data centers. The funding was led by VXI Capital and joined by Engine Ventures and Tamarack Global, with some proceeds earmarked for long-lead equipment orders, according to Bloomberg Business.
'IKEA kit'
The company plans to build a power plant for a data center under development at the Port of Victoria, Texas. It will start with natural gas generators and later swap in small reactors built using a standardized, repeatable model meant to speed timelines and rein in costs that have dogged large bespoke projects, Chief Executive Jake Jurewicz said. He described the approach as “the IKEA kit for how to build a nuclear power plant.”
Blue Energy’s first project is slated to be a 1.5-gigawatt installation expected to begin construction later this year in Texas.
Invented for nuclear submarines
The company’s central bet is that shipyards—long accustomed to handling heavy steel at scale—can serve as efficient assembly factories. The approach is meant to minimize on-site work and make more of the build resemble manufacturing rather than bespoke construction. “The nuclear power technology that is most common — light water reactors — was originally invented for nuclear submarines,” Jurewicz said. “There has actually always been a history of basically pre-fabbing it and looking at it in a shipyard context,” Jurewicz told TechCrunch.
Once completed in a shipyard, reactor modules and other major components would move by barge to installation sites, a constraint that still leaves ample reach via rivers into key markets in the USA and elsewhere.
Jurewicz has pointed to a parallel in the liquefied natural gas sector, where modular construction at centralized industrial sites helped compress schedules. “They cut the schedule in half doing this, which was very disruptive,” Jurewicz said.