US nuclear start-up Blue Energy, spun out from MIT’s Nuclear Science & Engineering Department in 2023, has raised $380m in financing to advance its turnkey approach to nuclear plant development. The fundraise was led by VXI Capital with significant backing from Engine Ventures and participation from other existing investors, including At One Ventures and Tamarack Global. Proceeds will support procurement of long-lead equipment, project development activities, and general corporate purposes.
Blue Energy’s primary goal is to address the “other 93%” of nuclear costs – the construction, overhead, and interest – rather than designing a new reactor technology. They operate as a reactor-agnostic developer and partner with existing reactor vendors to house proven light-water reactor technology within their own proprietary plant architecture.
Reactors and plant components will be built in shipyards rather than on-site. Completed modules will be transported by barge to their final location, allowing for faster, more predictable assembly. The company aims to cut construction costs from roughly $10,000 per kilowatt to $2,000 per kilowatt, reducing the timeline from a decade to about two years.
The company focuses on light-water small modular reactors (SMRs). By integrating with established reactor vendors, Blue Energy can leverage existing regulatory progress to bring their plants to market faster. The company targets “next generation” reactors from established firms to ensure the technology is already familiar to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Their architecture is built specifically for the dimensions and passive safety requirements of modern SMRs.
Blue Energy partners with vendors to have the reactor core and primary systems built as modules in shipyards. The reactors are designed to be inserted into XL monopiles (large steel tubes originally developed for offshore wind foundations) which are then submerged in water to provide a massive, passive cooling reservoir. The design enforces a strict divide between the nuclear systems (provided by the vendor) and non-nuclear systems (built by Blue Energy), allowing the bulk of the plant to be constructed under fixed-cost shipyard contracts.
“This funding marks an important step in Blue Energy’s mission to make new nuclear more deployable, predictable, and financeable,” said Blue Energy CEO and Co-Founder Jake Jurewicz. “Blue Energy is poised to deliver a significantly de-risked product and finally attract the private capital that nuclear deployment has historically struggled to secure. And for the first time, a nuclear project is designed so that it doesn’t need to rely primarily on taxpayer dollars and ratepayers to backstop risk.”
He added: “By combining offsite prefabrication, standardised plant delivery and a disciplined development model, we believe Blue Energy can reduce cost and compress timelines with the goal of making nuclear power competitive with fossil fuel and renewables – all without sacrificing safety. Blue Energy is developing a nuclear power product designed to scale at a time when the world needs it most.”
Blue Energy says it could begin early site works on its first planned project in Texas in 2026, to support a final investment decision in 2027. In November 2025, Blue Energy and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure company Crusoe announced a strategic partnership to develop a nuclear-powered data centre campus in the Port of Victoria, Texas. Blue Energy secured a site to design, develop, and operate an advanced NPP of up to 1.5 GWe to supply power to Crusoe-developed AI factories on a nearby 1,600-acre secured site.
The location was chosen for its proximity to existing transmission lines, fibre-optic networks, and one of the largest natural gas pipeline systems in the US. This access is critical for the project’s “gas bridge” strategy. The project follows a phased “gas-to-nuclear” conversion to provide power to customers quickly while the nuclear components are manufactured and licensed.
On-site work is expected to begin in the third quarter of 2026. The facility will first generate electricity in 2028 using natural gas to meet the immediate power needs of the Crusoe data centres. The plant is expected to fully transition to nuclear generation by 2031 as shipyard-built reactor modules are integrated into the site. The development is projected to attract over $1bn in investment and create approximately 100 high-paying jobs in the region, including the nearby communities of Victoria and Bloomington.
“The Blue Energy team has made remarkable progress de-risking the single hardest problem in nuclear – the cost structure that makes it project-financeable,” said Michael Kearney, General Partner at Engine Ventures and Board Director at Blue Energy. “Their manufacturing and development approach is what finally positions nuclear to run down the cost curve necessary for rapid deployment to meet this moment of demand growth, and we couldn’t be more excited to back them on that path.”
NRC in January approved Blue Energy’s innovative approach to resequencing major phases of nuclear plant construction by initially energising turbines with natural gas before conversion to nuclear power. This approval marks an important regulatory milestone and establishes a new precedent for phased nuclear plant construction in the United States.
NRC approved Blue Energy’s licensing topical report, which supports the company’s innovative approach to resequencing major phases of nuclear plant construction. The approved topical report also clarifies which parts of any similar Blue Energy projects require prior NRC approval and which do not, creating a more focused regulatory process for reviewing safety-related and nuclear-specific infrastructure.
