Nuclear start-up newcleo has closed of a €75m financing round, bringing total funds raised in the past 12 months to over €105m and bringing total funds raised by the company since 2021 to €645m.
The round included continued support from existing shareholders such as venture capital firms Kairos and Indaco Ventures, asset manager Azimut Investments (Azimut Group), the CERN pension fund and heavy industrial components manufacturer Walter Tosto, New industrial investors included steel mill manufacturer Danieli & C, cement and concrete manufacturer Cementir Holding NV, and valves manufacturer Orion Valves (through its investment vehicle Ecoline), as well as investment vehicles backed by industrial families active in the oil, hydrogen and plastics sectors.
Technology company NextChem (part of engineering group MARIE has also become a newcleo shareholder following the establishment of NEXT-N, a JV focused on the development of high value engineering services and technologies for the conventional island and balance of plant for the global SMR market.
“Our ability to deliver impactful low-carbon energy solutions for energy-intensive firms is proving an attractive investment rationale for both industrial and financial investors,” said newcleo CEO Stefano Buono, “Our tangible progress in licensing, R&D, vertical integration and geographic expansion is seen by investors as a key differentiator in the race to deliver clean, safe and affordable nuclear energy.”
He added: “This financing will support the continued deployment of our R&D infrastructure in Europe, including the construction of PRECURSOR, our non-nuclear reactor, and accelerate our expansion in the US, which today represents the most dynamic market for advanced reactor technologies. The US is also home to key institutional, strategically aligned investors and market opportunities that we are eager to explore.”
Currently, the company has established collaborations with ship builder Fincantieri (for nuclear-powered ships), offshore engineering company SAIPEM (for floating nuclear power plants), chemicals and engineering company MAIRE (for green chemicals production), and steel mill manufacturer Danieli (for green steel manufacturing) among others.
In France, the company has submitted its nuclear safety programme for both its advanced fuel manufacturing facility and advanced reactor design and aims to apply for construction licences for both facility types by the end of 2027. The company has secured a site in Nogent-sur-Seine to host the advanced fuel manufacturing facility and has initiated the land acquisition process for a site in Chinon to deploy the advanced reactor.
Newcleo has a team of over 1,000 employees throughout Europe working on the design of lead-cooled fast reactor technology – the LFR-AS-200 (commercial) and LFR-AS-30 (demonstrator). The company has initiated the land acquisition process for its 30 MWe demo reactor in the Chinon region of France.
In Italy, newcleo is building a state-of-the-art R&D and Qualification facility at ENEA’s Brasimone Research Centre, where it has already completed the construction of OTHELLO, a 2 MW loop-type system to qualify key components and solutions of its LFR technology. The site will also host PRECURSOR, a 10 MW lead-cooled non-nuclear test system designed to integrate all reactor subsystems up to the turbine, representative of commercial scale operations. The company plans to complete the construction of PRECURSOR by end of 2026 and to commission it in the early months of 2027. Like OTHELLO, PRECURSOR is completely designed, procured and built by newcleo’s subsidiary EPCM and manufacturing companies SRS and Fucina.
In Slovakia, newcleo has established Newvys, a joint venture with Slovakia’s state-owned nuclear decommissioning company JAVYS, to deploy up to four 200 MWe reactors at the Jaslovske Bohunice nuclear site. In the US, newcleo and Oklo have signed a strategic partnership to advance the domestic nuclear fuel ecosystem and the construction of advanced nuclear fuel manufacturing infrastructure.
Newcleo’s key projects are its reactors and a planned facility to produce mixed uranium plutonium oxide (mox) fuel in France targeted for 2030 – both still in the basic design stage, although pre-licensing processes are underway with French regulators.
Newcleo has an ambitious timeline: 2024–2026: test the mechanical systems (PRECURSOR); 2026–2028: finalise the “Standard Design” and get the construction permit; 2028–2031: Rapid assembly (using modular components built in their own factories); 2032: First criticality. Newcleo has explicitly told regulators that their 30 MWe reactor and the mox plant are “interdependent projects”. If one fails to get licensed, the other cannot function.
Using mox for the LFR-AS-30 introduces complexities that could stall the project before the reactor even reaches criticality. Mox is significantly more difficult to handle than uranium – because it contains plutonium, manufacturing requires highly shielded, automated hot cells. Moreover, the performance of mox fuel inside a liquid lead environment is unknown and must take into account the chemical interactions of the fuel/cladding and the thermal-hydraulic stress of the lead.
Because newcleo is planning its own mox plant in France this will require coordinating reactor designers simultaneously with chemical engineers, nuclear physicists, and specialist builders from disparate organisations and companies.
Acquiring plutonium may also be a problem. In 2025, the UK government decided to immobilise its plutonium stockpile rather than make it available for advanced reactors. This decision forced newcleo to suspend its UK reactor programme and move its headquarters to Paris. The company will how have to access to the stockpiles of plutonium separated at Orano’s La Hague reprocessing plant.
Since its launch in 2021, newcleo has been very active in fundraising and signing partnership and collaboration agreements. Its business now counts over 90 partnerships, with more than 1,000 employees based in 19 locations across France, Italy, the UK, Switzerland, and Slovakia, including three manufacturing facilities.
While the newcleo website includes a mock-up of the LFR reactor, it provides very little technical information about the reactor design. Currently, the only operating liquid metal-cooled fast reactors are in Russia, using sodium as the coolant. Russia is also constructing the world’s first ever lead-cooled SMR (Brest-OD-300) in Seversk as part of a facility to demonstrate an on-site closed fuel cycle. This reactor, based on decades of complex research and development supported by the entire Russian nuclear industry, is due to begin operation in 2029.
By contrast, despite its rapid business expansion, newcleo’s technologies remain in the very basic design stage and are dependent on co-ordinating the activities of companies and organisations spread across Europe. To meet its ambitious 2030–2032 target for a first-of-a-kind (FOAK) reactor, newcleo is adopting a parallel processing strategy. Normally designing, licensing and building is done in sequence. Newcleo is attempting to do all three at once.
