Valar Atomics

Valar Atomics is a nuclear energy startup founded on July 4, 2023 by Isaiah Taylor, who was later joined by Kip Mock as head of operations, building small modular, helium-cooled, high-temperature gas reactors intended to be manufactured in factories rather than built on-site one at a time. The company's reactors, branded Nova Core and its larger successor Ward 250, are designed to run at temperatures up to 900°C and to produce power, hydrogen, and synthetic hydrocarbon fuels for industrial customers and, increasingly, AI data centers, without relying on the local water supply for cooling.

In November 2025 Valar said it became the first venture-backed company to achieve criticality, reaching a self-sustaining nuclear reaction with its Nova Core test unit at Los Alamos National Laboratory. It followed that in June 2026 by bringing its five-megawatt Ward 250 reactor to criticality at a pilot site in Orangeville, Utah, and in July 2026 used the reactor to power an Nvidia Blackwell-based system live on stage, announcing a feasibility study with Nvidia for a 30-megawatt, closed-loop, water-free AI data center.

Headquartered in El Segundo, California, with its pilot reactor site at the San Rafael Energy Research Center in Utah, Valar has raised capital across three disclosed equity rounds — a $19 million seed in February 2025, a $130 million Series A in November 2025, and a $1 billion Series B led by Sequoia Capital in August 2026 — plus a separate $200 million credit facility from Erebor and other banks announced alongside the Series B. Bloomberg reported the Series B valued the company at about $6 billion, though Valar itself has not disclosed a valuation.