US-based X-Energy Reactor Company has closed an oversubscribed Series D financing round of approximately $700m that pushed its total capital base to more than $1.5bn. The round was led by Jane Street, from new investors including ARK Invest, Galvanize, Hood River Capital Management, Point72, Reaves Asset Management, XTX Ventures and various others, as well as existing investors including Ares Management funds, Corner Capital, Emerson Collective, NGP, Segra Capital Management and others.
Moelis & Company LLC and J.P. Morgan Securities LLC acted as placement agents for the transaction and Latham & Watkins LLP acted as legal advisor to X-energy on the transaction.
X-energy said it expects to use proceeds from the round to help continue the expansion of its supply chain and commercial pipeline, supporting an orderbook of more than 11 GWe, representing approximately 144 advanced small modular reactors (SMRs).
“We are highly focused on building a world-class project and technology delivery platform to accelerate the commercialisation of our Xe-100 reactor and TRISO-X fuel,” said X-energy CEO J Clay Sell. “The success of this financing round allows us to deepen partnerships with critical deployment partners and invest in a robust and reliable supply chain to successfully deliver projects with our customers.”
The Xe-100 is a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor with a thermal output of 200 MWt or an electrical output of 80 MWe. It can be scaled into a four-pack 320 MWe power plant, fuelled by the company’s proprietary TRISO-X tri-structural isotropic particle fuel. The Xe-100 evolved from both the UK’s Dragon reactor at Winfrith in Dorset and the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor project in South Africa.
X-energy was selected by the US Department of Energy (DOE) in 2020 to receive up to $1.2bn in matching funds under the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP) to develop, license, build, and demonstrate an operational advanced reactor and fuel fabrication facility by the end of the decade. X-Energy has since completed the reactor engineering and basic design and is developing a fuel fabrication facility in Oak Ridge in Tennessee.
X-energy is advancing its Xe-100 SMR and TRISO-X fuel in projects with Dow, Amazon, and Centrica. Its initial proposed four-unit Xe-100 plant is planned for Dow’s UCC Seadrift Operations manufacturing site on the Texas Gulf Coast, supported by the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP), and currently under permit review with the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
Following the project with Dow, X-energy and Amazon announced Amazon’s options to deploy more than 5 GWe of Xe-100 projects across US by 2039, beginning with the Cascade Advanced Energy Facility in Washington state in partnership with Energy Northwest. Additionally, X-energy is partnered with British energy and services company Centrica to deploy 6 GWe in the UK.
In 2024, X-energy was awarded a $148.5m tax credit for the construction by wholly-owned subsidiary, TRISO-X of an advanced nuclear fuel fabrication facility, TX-1, in Oak Ridge. The award was funded by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and is part of the Qualifying Advanced Energy Project Tax Credit programme jointly administered by DOE, the Department of the Treasury, and the Internal Revenue Service.
In addition to ARDP funding, DOE also awarded X-energy $9m in 2018 to support the initial design of the company’s fuel fabrication facility that later evolved into TX-1. TRISO-X anticipates regulatory approval from NRC by May 2026 and recently received approval from DOE to spend an additional $30m to secure long-lead procurement items to adhere to the overall project schedule.
In November, X-energy announced the start of vertical construction for its $300m TX-1 fuel fabrication facility which is situated on land that was formerly part of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and was part of a tract released in 1996 for private development to help diversify the region’s economic base. TRISO-X acquired the campus from the Oak Ridge Industrial Development Board in 2022.
TX-1 will be the first of two facilities planned for the site to fabricate the company’s ceramic fuel designed to withstand extreme temperatures and retain fission products under all reactor conditions. The fuel will be enriched to 19.5% U235.
In April X-energy and TRISO-X announced an allocation of high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) from the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy’s HALEU Allocation Program. “This first allocation is a critical step forward to bridge the HALEU availability gap in the nuclear supply chain with existing material,” said TRISO-X president Joel Duling. “Coupled with the HALEU Availability Program and other efforts, we expect the commercial sector to further bridge the availability gap to support the delivery and scalability of the advanced reactor fleet.” The allocation will be delivered in the first core loads of fuel in partnership with Dow at their UCC Seadrift Operations manufacturing site.
