Amazon Funds 12 Small Nuclear Reactors at Indiana Coal Site

Amazon said Monday it will fund development of a proposed 960-megawatt nuclear power plant in Indiana and become the first customer to buy its electricity, according to TechCrunch. The plant would be built on the site of a demolished coal facility just south of Terre Haute and would consist of 12 small modular reactors supplied by X-energy, a company that designs compact nuclear units and went public in April.

Utility American Electric Power would operate the plant, TechCrunch reported. The arrangement marks the second commercial agreement between Amazon and X-energy, three times larger than their first deal, which was announced two years earlier.

What exactly did Amazon and X-energy announce?

The companies disclosed a plan to build a nuclear facility using X-energy's Xe-100 reactor design, with Amazon financing the project and American Electric Power running it once complete, per TechCrunch. Unlike many power-purchase arrangements tied to dedicated data-center campuses, this plant would connect to the public electric grid, though Amazon said the output would also serve its data centers.

Amazon has already committed significant capital to X-energy's reactor technology, having led a $700 million Series C-1 funding round for the company in October 2024, TechCrunch reported.

How much electricity would the Indiana reactors generate?

The proposed facility would produce an estimated 960 megawatts from 12 Xe-100 units, according to TechCrunch — close to a full gigawatt, which is roughly the output of a large conventional nuclear reactor, but split across a dozen smaller, factory-built modules. Amazon and X-energy have said they intend to build 5 gigawatts of new nuclear generating capacity in the United States by 2039, the outlet reported.

Why are companies betting on small modular reactors instead of traditional plants?

Startups and major cloud providers see small modular reactors, or SMRs, as a path out of a prolonged slump in U.S. nuclear construction, TechCrunch reported. The most recent large nuclear plants built in the country ran well over budget and years behind schedule. By shrinking individual reactor units so they can be mass-produced in factories rather than custom-built on site, companies like X-energy are wagering that manufacturing at scale will hold down costs and keep timelines predictable.

Even proponents acknowledge the approach carries risk. Experts cited by TechCrunch said mass manufacturing of complex hardware typically takes roughly a decade before it starts delivering the cost and schedule benefits companies are counting on — meaning the Indiana project's economics depend on lessons X-energy has not yet proven it can apply at commercial scale.

Has X-energy actually built one of these reactors yet?

No. The company's aggressive 2039 target depends first on successfully delivering its initial power plant at a Dow Chemical site southeast of Houston, Texas, known as Seadrift, according to TechCrunch. That facility is designed to house four Xe-100 reactors providing heat and electricity to the chemical plant, but X-energy has not yet broken ground there. Its construction permit remains in the final phases of review by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, TechCrunch reported.

The Seadrift site has also drawn legal scrutiny. The State of Texas has filed a lawsuit against the facility, accusing it of what the suit describes as

"habitual non-compliance" with water and solid-waste regulations and permits.

That litigation underscores the uncertainty facing X-energy's first commercial project even as the company signs larger follow-on deals like the one with Amazon.

How did investors respond to the Amazon-X-energy deal?

X-energy debuted on the Nasdaq in April at $23 per share, and investor enthusiasm pushed the stock up 27% on its first day of trading, TechCrunch reported. Since then, shares have fallen by nearly two-thirds. News of the Indiana deal lifted X-energy's stock about 10% in premarket trading Monday, though gains had faded to a decline of less than 2% by the time TechCrunch published its report — a reminder that markets are still weighing the technology's unproven manufacturing promise against its long development timeline.

Nuclear expansion, by the numbers

• 960 megawatts: proposed capacity of the Indiana plant, built from 12 Xe-100 small modular reactors
• 5 gigawatts: combined nuclear capacity Amazon and X-energy aim to build in the U.S. by 2039

For more on how large tech companies are reshaping infrastructure spending, see HTT News' earlier coverage of Meta's AI-focused subscription plans.