Valar Atomics
Valar Atomics develops standardized high-temperature gas-cooled nuclear reactors for industrial power and clean fuel production.
Operating headquarters
El Segundo, CA, USFounded
2023Valar Atomics develops standardized high-temperature gas-cooled nuclear reactors for industrial power and clean fuel production.
Builds standardized TRISO-fueled HTGR reactors clustered on gigasites for hydrogen, fuels, and power.
Valar Atomics builds standardized high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs) using TRISO fuel, a graphite moderator, and helium coolant. Its Ward 250 test reactor achieved zero-power criticality at the San Rafael Energy Lab in Utah in June 2026 and subsequently generated electricity that powered an NVIDIA GPU system.
The company clusters hundreds of reactors on gigasite campuses to produce grid-independent outputs: hydrogen via a sulfur-iodine cycle, data-center power, heavy industrial heat and power, and synthetic hydrocarbon fuels via a modified Fischer-Tropsch process.
Targets AI-power demand and industrial decarbonization with mass-produced reactor fleets.
Valar targets demand from AI infrastructure, citing an estimate that AI models will require over 200 terawatt-hours of additional grid power by 2030. It announced a collaboration with NVIDIA on a waterless 30 MW AI factory matched to Ward 250's waterless reactor technology.
The company says Series B financing funds a transition from demonstrating reactor operability to producing fleets, on a stated trajectory from tens to hundreds and then thousands of reactors per year, with additional applications in steel production and electrolysis.
Vertically integrates reactor design, build, operation, and fuel, licensing once per gigasite.
Valar vertically integrates reactor design, construction, operation, and fuel production, manufacturing one standardized design at scale instead of selling reactors to third parties. Concentrating deployments on gigasites amortizes site licensing costs across many reactors and makes the company its own reactor customer.
In June 2026 its Ward 250 became the first company-built reactor to achieve criticality outside a national laboratory, and the company states that data from each operating reactor feeds continuously simpler, faster production of subsequent units.