The nuclear industry is in the mist of a renaissance. Old plants are being refurbished, and investors are showering startups with cash. In the last several weeks of 2025 alone, nuclear startups raised $1.1 billion, largely on investor optimism that smaller nuclear reactors will succeed where the broader industry has recently stumbled.
Traditional nuclear reactors are massive pieces of infrastructure. The newest reactors built in the U.S. — Vogtle 3 and 4 in Georgia — contain tens of thousands of tons of concrete, are powered by fuel assemblies 14 feet tall, and generate over 1 gigawatt of electricity each. But they were also eight years late and more than $20 billion over budget.
The fresh crop of nuclear startups hopes that by shrinking the reactor, they’ll be able to sidestep both problems. Need more power? Just add more reactors. Smaller reactors, they argue, can be built using mass production techniques, and as companies produce more parts, they should get better at making them, which should drive down costs.
The magnitude of that benefit is something experts are still researching, but today’s nuclear startups are depending on it being greater than zero.
But manufacturing isn’t easy. Just look at Tesla’s experience: The company struggled mightily to profitably produce the Model 3 in large numbers — and it had the benefit of being in the automotive industry, where the U.S. still has significant expertise. U.S. nuclear startups don’t have that advantage.
“I have a number of friends who work in supply chain for nuclear, and they can rattle off like five to ten materials that we just don’t make in the United States,” Milo Werner, general partner at DCVC, told TechCrunch. “We have to buy them overseas. We’ve forgotten how to make them.”
Werner knows a thing or two about manufacturing. Before becoming an investor, she worked at Tesla leading new product introduction, and before that, she did the same at FitBit, launching four factories in China for the wearables company. Today, in addition to investing at D …