Amazon funds 12 SMRs at Indiana coal plant site
Original: Amazon to fund 12 small nuclear reactors at former Indiana coal plant
Why This Matters
Big Tech nuclear deals signal serious demand pressure on a still-unproven SMR supply chain.
Amazon will fund a 960-MW nuclear plant in Indiana using 12 X-energy Xe-100 reactors at a former coal site near Terre Haute, with AEP operating and Amazon as first power customer.
Amazon, AEP, and X-energy announced Monday that Amazon will fund a 960-megawatt small modular reactor plant in Indiana — its second commercial deal with X-energy and three times the scale of their first agreement two years ago. The plant will consist of 12 Xe-100 reactors sited on a demolished coal plant just south of Terre Haute, operated by utility American Electric Power. Power will connect to the public grid while also serving Amazon data centers.
Amazon led X-energy's $700 million Series C-1 round in October 2024, and the two companies have a stated goal of 5 gigawatts of new U.S. nuclear capacity by 2039. The timeline hinges on X-energy first delivering reactors at Dow Chemical's Seadrift site near Houston — a project that hasn't broken ground yet, is still awaiting final NRC construction permit approval, and is currently named in a Texas state lawsuit alleging "habitual non-compliance" with water and solid-waste regulations.
X-energy went public on Nasdaq in April at $23/share, surged 27% on day one, then shed nearly two-thirds of its value. Monday's announcement pushed shares up ~10% in pre-market trading before settling down less than 2% by publication time.