Microreactor startup Antares raises $96M for land, sea, and space-based nuclear power

Summary

Nuclear startup Antares said Tuesday it has raised $96 million in Series B funding as it pursues its small modular reactor design. The round, which was led by Shine Capital with participation from Alt Capital, Caffeinated, FiftyThree Stations, Industrious, and others, consists of $71 million in equity and $25 million in debt. Antares says it is targeting commercial, defense, and space-based applications with its R1 microreactor, which will produce between 100 kilowatts and 1 megawatt of electricity. The design uses TRISO fuel, which in Antares case is spheres of carbon- and ceramic-coated uranium embedded in graphite. The startup is one of several companies that have benefited recently from renewed interest in nuclear power over the last six months. Last week, Amazon-backed X-energy said it had raised a $700 million Series D round, which came on the heels of an upsized $700 million Series C that closed in February. The company is also designing a reactor around TRISO fuel. Deep Fission, which had struggled to raise money as recently as April, went public in a $30 million reverse merger in September. Aalo Atomics raised $100 million in August to build a demonstration data center powered by a microreactor, and in June, Nvidia contributed to a $650 million round for TerraPower, a small modular reactor startup also backed by Bill Gates. Big nuclear plants have been given a second chance, too. Techcrunch event San Francisco | October 13-15, 2026 Earlier this month, Microsoft partner Constellation Energy received a $1 billion loan from the Department of Energy to restart a reactor at Three Mile Island by 2028. That project is expected to cost $1.6 billion to refurbish the reactor that was idled in 2019. In October, Google said it would work with NextEra Energy to reopen a nuclear power plant in Iowa that was damaged during a torrential downpour in 2020. Earlier this summer, Amazon bought 1.92 gigawatts of generating capacity from a Talen Energy nuclear plant in Pennsylvan...