On October 14, 2024, Google announced an agreement with Kairos Power to buy electricity from a fleet of small modular reactors (SMRs), describing it as the first corporate agreement to purchase nuclear power from multiple SMRs. The deal targets up to 500 megawatts of what Google called “new 24/7 carbon-free power,” with the first reactor expected online by 2030 and additional reactors deployed through 2035.
Kairos Power’s design is not a conventional water-cooled reactor. Google’s announcement described a system that uses a molten-salt coolant combined with ceramic, pebble-type fuel to move heat to a steam turbine - a fourth-generation approach that proponents argue can be built in smaller, factory-produced units rather than as one giant bespoke plant. The “small modular” idea is precisely that reactors are standardized and repeatable, which is what makes a multi-reactor corporate purchase agreement conceivable in the first place.
The significance was the buyer’s motive. Google framed the purchase around the electricity its data centers and AI work require, making it one of the clearest early signals that the largest AI operators had begun treating round-the-clock carbon-free generation as something to procure directly, at the scale of new power plants, rather than buy off the grid. Coming weeks after Microsoft’s deal to restart Three Mile Island and Amazon’s own SMR investments, it helped establish nuclear - and SMRs specifically - as a central plank of the AI infrastructure buildout.