Nuclear Upstart Elementl Gets Korean Backing for $750 Million Push

Nuclear energy company Elementl Power is getting backing from a South Korean venture capital firm as it seeks to raise $750 million, amid skyrocketing demand for electricity to power AI.

A consortium led by DS Investment Partners pledged as much as $200 million to develop up to three of Elementl’s nuclear projects, according to people familiar with the matter. Samsung C&T Corp., in talks to provide some engineering support, is committing money, too, in a fundraising push that will test private capital’s appetite for the first stages of developing atomic power sources.

The Washington firm is seeking money to back the earliest phases of utility-scale buildouts in at least one instance. Elementl is also working to deploy a new kind of nuclear technology designed to be more compact than conventional reactors. In Meigs County, Ohio, a former Appalachian coal mining hub, the developer is working to deploy small modular reactors from GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy that will supply as much as 1.5 gigawatts.

While small modular reactors have never been implemented at commercial scale in the US, record demand for electricity from data centers is prompting new entrants to wade in. They face hurdles getting operating licenses — and capital for the new buildouts.

Elementl, founded in 2022 and backed by Energy Impact Partners and T. Rowe Price Group, will deploy its latest fundraising push on work that needs to be done before customers to sign on to contracts. The hope is that will open the door for more traditional project financing in future, the firm’s chief executive officer, Chris Colbert, said in an interview. That typically involves bigger institutions backing projects that start delivering cash flows.

Conventional nuclear energy projects have traditionally necessitated significant government support, with investors long viewing them as capital-intensive and too risky. Now AI is putting nuclear power, which can run continuously at high capacity, in the spotlight. Demand for electricity to power data centers far outstrips supply, prompting tech firms to seek deals for nuclear power.

“Power is increasingly the bottleneck,” Colbert said. “We’re seeing huge demand signal from domestic manufacturing, re-onshoring and the AI race, which the US can’t afford to lose.”

Read More: How Trump and Data Centers Are Boosting Nuclear Power: Explainer

Last year, Elementl signed an agreement with Alphabet Inc.’s Google to position project sites for nuclear energy.