Thirteen deals. 9.8 gigawatts of nuclear capacity already under contract. Microsoft, Google, Meta and Amazon have made atomic energy the backbone of their digital infrastructure, driven by an electricity demand that tolerates no interruptions. Data centers never sleep, and intermittent renewables simply cannot keep up.
The most striking example remains the Microsoft and Constellation Energy partnership. In September 2024, the two companies signed a twenty-year power purchase agreement for the entire output of the Three Mile Island Unit 1 plant, rebranded as the Crane Clean Energy Center: 835 megawatts of capacity earmarked to power Microsoft’s data centers across the PJM grid. The project carries a price tag of $1.6 billion. In November 2025, the U.S. Department of Energy closed a $1 billion loan to support the restart, further accelerating the timeline. The plant, which had been offline since 2019, is expected to return to service as early as the second half of 2027 — a full year ahead of schedule — after FERC approved a transmission waiver in June 2026 that removed the last grid-related hurdle. The facility has already filled over 65% of its required workforce and has successfully completed testing of key systems, including its turbines.
Google has taken a different path, betting on SMRs. Its agreement with Kairos Power — the first of its kind for a private company in the United States — covers 500 megawatts of capacity from small modular reactors, with the first site expected to be operational by 2030. A separate 25-year agreement with NextEra Energy targets the potential restart of the Duane Arnold Energy Center in Iowa. Amazon, meanwhile, has invested $700 million in X-energy and backed a 320-megawatt first-phase project with an expansion option up to 960 MW, managed by a utility coalition in Washington State. Total investment in the Susquehanna plant area in Pennsylvania exceeds $20 billion.
Meta is pursuing multiple fronts simultaneously. The company has signed a twenty-year deal with Constellation to purchase power from the Clinton Clean Energy Center in Illinois, and has announced agreements with TerraPower, Oklo and Vistra to supply its one-gigawatt Prometheus supercluster, currently under construction in New Albany, Ohio. The three deals aim to support up to 6.6 gigawatts of clean energy by 2035. Oracle, for its part, has stated it has already secured building permits for a data center to be powered by three small modular reactors, though the location remains undisclosed. The rationale behind this race is straightforward and backed by hard numbers: global electricity generation for data centers is projected to grow from 460 terawatt-hours in 2024 to more than 1,300 terawatt-hours by 2035. Nuclear power offers continuous, emissions-free output that renewables cannot match with the same reliability.
What is unfolding here is more than a corporate energy procurement shift. It is proof that the market has already answered the question of which technology can sustain AI over the long term. When private capital moves in this direction — with contractual horizons of twenty or twenty-five years — it effectively sets the priorities for the entire energy infrastructure of the decade. Nuclear is not waiting for political consensus: it is building facts on the ground, one gigawatt at a time.
