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Power & Energy: what will run the AI buildout
Every major AI company has now signed at least one nuclear power deal. Here's who's committed to what.
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Related: Nanotechnology (Sila's battery nanomaterials) →Infrastructure — Who Makes the Parts →Humanoid Robot Market Size & Forecasts →
Nearly 10 GW committed across the industry
Every major AI company — Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta — has signed at least one nuclear deal in 2026, committing to more than a dozen agreements worth nearly 10 gigawatts of capacity, enough to power roughly 7 million homes. Almost all of it is small modular reactor technology, none of which has been completed commercially in the US yet.
Source: Constellation Energy newsroom →
Microsoft gets there first, via an existing reactor restart
Microsoft's 20-year power purchase agreement covers the entire 835 MW output of the restarted Three Mile Island Unit 1, renamed the Crane Clean Energy Center — expected online in 2027, the fastest path to real power since it reuses an existing plant instead of building new.
Source: Constellation Energy newsroom →
Amazon and Google are betting on next-generation SMRs
Amazon invested $700 million in X-energy for up to 12 Xe-100 reactors alongside a $20 billion-plus Pennsylvania AI campus. Google committed to 500 MW of Kairos Power's KP-FHR reactor design by 2035 — higher risk than a restart, but built specifically for the task.
Graphene's real energy research isn't coming from the oil majors — it's mining companies and universities
A natural question is whether oil giants are quietly funding graphene as a hedge against disruption. Based on what's actually publicly documented, they aren't the ones driving it. The real activity: Graphene Manufacturing Group (GMG), partnered with mining company Rio Tinto and the University of Queensland, has a graphene aluminum-ion battery that can charge in roughly 6 minutes, targeting customer testing this year and small commercial production in 2027. Separately, Rice University's "flash Joule heating" process can produce graphene from waste — plastic, food scraps, coal, even captured CO2 — in milliseconds, addressing the cost barrier (historically several hundred dollars per kilogram) that's held graphene back from wider energy use. The University of Manchester's Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre is now scaling real commercial production, with a pipeline of 75+ projects spanning energy storage, composites, and coatings. Oil majors ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP are investing billions in transition technology, but it's concentrated in hydrogen and carbon capture — not graphene specifically, at least not in what's publicly disclosed.
Source: AL Circle / ScienceDaily →
Fusion is where oil-major money actually shows up — and it's the biggest next-gen energy story by dollars
Private fusion companies raised $2.64 billion in the 12 months to July 2025, a 178% jump year-over-year, and cumulative private investment in the sector has now passed $13 billion. Commonwealth Fusion Systems holds the largest single share at $3 billion, is building its SPARC reactor to demonstrate net energy gain by late 2026, and has already secured a site in Virginia for a first commercial plant — backed by Google, Bill Gates, and Tiger Global. Helion Energy signed the industry's first-ever fusion power purchase agreement, with Microsoft committing to buy fusion electricity starting around 2028; one of Helion's earliest and largest backers is OpenAI's Sam Altman. Here's the direct answer to whether oil majors are involved: Chevron has directly invested in nuclear fusion and separately pledged $10 billion toward broader clean energy technology including renewable fuels, geothermal, and carbon capture. Government money is moving too — the US Department of Energy's ARPA-E committed $135 million to fusion in 2026, its largest fusion investment ever, while China is spending an estimated $2.2 billion annually and has emerged as the primary competitive threat to Western private-sector fusion leadership. Not every bet is paying off: General Fusion nearly collapsed in 2025 before a $1 billion SPAC merger kept it alive, a reminder that this remains a genuinely high-risk, high-reward category despite the headline dollar figures.
Source: Nature Tech Memos / US News →
Next-generation geothermal financing is up 80% in a single year
Financing for next-generation geothermal technology reached nearly $2.2 billion in 2025 — an 80% year-over-year increase, and up from just $22 million in 2018, according to International Energy Agency analysis. Conventional geothermal power projects separately attracted nearly $5 billion in 2025 (a fourfold increase since 2018), while geothermal heating projects (like district heating systems) secured over $11.5 billion in 2025 alone. Real venture-backed startups — Fervo Energy, Mazama Energy, and MIT spinout Quaise Energy — have raised significant rounds and demonstrated working next-generation drilling technology. The US Department of Energy has moved real government money too: $30 million toward unlocking superhot underground reservoirs, plus a separate $171.5 million field-test funding round announced in February 2026. For context on scale, though: Biden-era comparable funding allocated roughly $9 billion for hydrogen and $10 billion for nuclear — geothermal is growing fast, but the dollar totals are still a fraction of what's gone into other next-gen categories.
Source: International Energy Agency →
Power Directory
X-energy
SMR partner — Amazon (private)
Kairos Power
SMR partner — Google (private)
Constellation Energy
Crane Clean Energy Center — Microsoft
Oklo
Aurora SFR advanced reactor
+ your company here
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