Kairos Power gets up to $100M from Samsung group to build nuclear reactor for Google

Future Google supplier Kairos Power inked a deal with Samsung C&T to help build its first 50 megawatt nuclear power plant.

Future Google supplier Kairos Power inked a deal with Samsung C&T to help build its first 50 megawatt nuclear power plant. Kairos Power has picked engineering firm Samsung C&T to help build its 50 megawatt demonstration reactor for Google, which the nuclear startup is aiming to have completed by 2030. As part of the deal, Samsung C&T will make an equity investment in Kairos and provide “in-kind” engineering services, the combination of which is worth up to $100 million, Kairos Power said Monday. The equity investment will make up $70 million of the total, a Kairos spokesperson told TechCrunch. Samsung C&T has built or helped build about a dozen nuclear reactors around the globe.

Kairos is part of a wave of nuclear startups that have benefited from the surge in power demand from AI data centers. Google first signed a deal with the company in fall 2024, calling on Kairos to build nuclear reactors capable of generating about half a gigawatt of electricity by 2035. Currently, Kairos is building two reactors in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The first, Hermes 1, is a low-power demonstrator that will help the company refine its commercial design. The second, Hermes 2, is Kairos’s first commercial-scale reactor. Output from Hermes will count as the first 50 megawatts of its deal with Google. The startup received approval