TerraPower, the nuclear power startup founded by Bill Gates, plans to announce its first data center-focused nuclear project later this year, according to a Bloomberg report. The facility would mark the company’s second power plant, following one already under construction in Wyoming, with groundbreaking expected in 2027. While TerraPower has not named the customer for the new project, the company previously announced in January that Meta had agreed to purchase eight of its Natrium reactors.
TerraPower’s design offers a potential advantage for powering AI data centers through built-in energy storage. Traditional nuclear reactors operate most efficiently at full capacity and struggle to adjust output quickly, a challenge that becomes especially difficult when paired with data centers, whose power demands can spike or drop rapidly depending on AI workloads. Newer small modular reactors ramp faster but still face economic pressure to run near full capacity given nuclear power’s high upfront costs.
TerraPower’s 345-megawatt molten salt-cooled reactor addresses this by continuously generating heat and storing surplus energy in molten sodium, allowing the plant to rapidly increase steam production and electricity output during demand spikes without altering the reactor’s core operation. Originally designed to complement intermittent renewable sources like wind and solar, the approach may similarly suit the fluctuating power needs of AI infrastructure, positioning TerraPower competitively as nuclear startups race to serve the growing data center market.
