The grid is hungry.
The technology boom has led to a huge demand for power generation across the US and startups, scientists and atomic entrepreneurs are stepping up with ingenious new techniques and solutions to increase production.
Billions of dollars in contracts from tech giants and the government are at stake, and forward thinking companies are working a two-pronged approach — some focusing on creating power, others making its use more efficient.
San Francisco-based Biological Computing Company is in the second category, betting the best place to start is with what’s, literally, top of mind.
The company, founded in 2022, grows brain cells from rat brains or stem cells and stimulates them with electrical impulses to study how they respond. The data they collect is used to build mathematical models, called adapters, which sit on top of and improve existing AI models.
“The brain is the best computer we’ve ever known,” Jonathan Pomeranic, the company’s co-founder and COO told The Post. “What we’re doing is taking hundreds of millions of years of evolutionary advantages and applying them in the real world.”
Biological Computing Company claims its first adapter, built for a generative video model, demonstrated efficiency gains as high as 500% while also increasing the quality of video output.
On the heels of a $25 million fundraising round that closed earlier this year, the company is now developing its first text-to-video adapter.
Some 600 miles north of Silicon Valley in Portland, Ore., Panthalassa has developed a new type of data center powered by one of the earth’s most powerful forces: our oceans.
The company, named after an ancient superocean, makes spaceship-sized contraptions called nodes, which float at sea level and harness the power of waves.
Often placed many miles from shore, where waves are largest, the undersea portion of the node rocks up and down with each wave, pushing water through a turbine to generated near-continuous power.
There are no wires or cables connecting the nearly 300-foot tall nodes to land, but they have banks of built-in computers which can process computing tasks on the spot and send answers back via satellite.
In essence, it’s a floating data center. And it runs entirely on the clean and endless energy source of waves.
Across the country, the American nuclear industry is riding a wave of its own — encouraged by the Trump Administration.
Since taking office, the President has signed four executive orders to cut red tape and build out America’s nuclear infrastructure. Private sector companies have responded with milestone after milestone — in record time.
Valar Atomics was founded just three years ago and constructed their first reactor in a mere nine months.
“Our focus is on scaling nuclear as quickly and as safely as possible,” said Isaiah Taylor, Valar’s founder. “We want to make as much power as we possibly can for the American people.”
Valar manufactures microreactors — essentially, shrunken-down nuclear power plants. The company’s plan is to build their reactors then ship them across the country, providing power to individual data centers, factories and other energy-hungry facilities, rather than entire cities or regions.
Like traditional nuclear plants, microreactors generate electricity through fission, the splitting of atoms.
In June, Valar’s first reactor, Ward 250, successfully completed a zero-power fueled criticality demonstration at Utah San Rafael Energy Lab in Utah.
Reaching criticality means the Ward 250 demonstrated it can sustain a controlled nuclear chain reaction, needed to be proven before the reactor can generate power.
The reactor — approximately the size of an RV — will be able to generate 100 kilowatts of power when operational. The company says its units are designed to be meltdown-proof by virtue of their passive cooling systems.
The microreactor’s small size also opens the door to potential standardized mass-production in factories.
“Traditional nuclear companies can’t build fast enough, or at the scale required, to actually fix [these energy demand] problems,” Taylor said.
Venture capitalists are bullish on Valar’s solution. In August, the company closed a $1 billion Series B round led by Sequoia Capital.
Now valued at $6 billion, Valar is gearing up to construct its first “Gigasite,” where it will assemble multiple microreactors side-by-side to create a multi‑gigawatt output and power the large-scale data centers the AI industry needs.
“It’s the American spirit that’s enabling these innovations,” said Bobby Gallagher, CEO and co-founder of Deployable Energy. Another microreactor manufacturer, Deployable became the third of five startups in the US which have achieved criticality.
As of August, the other three companies are: Antares Nuclear, Oklo and Aalo Atomics.
“We’re finally treating nuclear power as a product, not a project,” Gallagher said.
And Big Tech is buying in.
Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta have all signed independent deals supporting hugely ambitious projects that aim to make nuclear power one of — if not the — main source of power for their AI needs.
And yet, the nuclear industry’s ultimate prize lies in a different process: fusion.
Whereas fission splits atoms, fusion combines. Both are carbon-free, but the latter produces upwards of four-times more energy per reaction.
Recreating and sustaining the extreme conditions required for fusion reactions has remained stubbornly out of reach for over half a century despite scientists from around the world working on it, but recent developments indicate there are reasons for renewed hope.
In December 2025, nuclear power company TAE Technologies merged with Trump Media and unveiled plans to build a fusion plant in the US. Once that site comes online, it could be the biggest power generation site in the world. But the science has to be proven first.
“Nuclear fusion is a huge golden goose opportunity,” said Dan Ives, tech analyst at Yorkville. “China is already ahead on this front, [so it’s] a big focus for [American] tech players.”