Introducing SMR Intelligence US

Here’s the first (and only) detailed compendium of the US companies vying to prevail in the race to commercialize small modular reactors. The winners could reap billions in profits.

The competition to develop and deploy small modular reactors is fierce and it’s global.

Few technologies show as much promise — or have gotten as much press attention in recent years — as SMRs. The reasons for the interest are obvious: if SMRs can be developed and deployed at scale, they could help meet soaring global power demand, stabilize electric grids, and help deliver on the enormous promise of nuclear energy. They could also help decarbonize power grids and provide reliable juice for AI and Big Tech.

The handful of publicly traded pure-play SMR companies are trading at eye-popping valuations. For instance, NuScale has never built a reactor. Last year, it lost $348 million, yet it still has a market capitalization of about $11.3 billion. Or consider Oklo. It hasn’t built a single reactor. It lost $73.6 million last year, yet its stock is up over 500% since January 1, and the company now boasts a market capitalization of approximately $19.4 billion.

Can you say irrational exuberance?

Let’s compare Oklo to Devon Energy, an Oklahoma City-based oil and gas company that had $15.9 billion in revenue and generated $3 billion in free cash flow in 2024. Despite those facts, Devon’s market capitalization is $22.5 billion, or just slightly more than Oklo’s.

Based solely on valuation metrics, investors may be too optimistic about SMRs. That said, AI requires staggering amounts of juice, and SMRs could, over the next decade or so, help provide a significant chunk of that power. As I noted here last month:

Today, the US is facing an unprecedented power crunch. After two decades of flat electricity demand, power use is suddenly soaring as the world’s biggest tech companies race to build massive data centers running thousands of AI computers that will use stunning volumes of juice. On August 11, the Electric Power Research Institute estimated that AI’s existing power demand is approximately 5 gigawatts, but that demand could reach 50 GW by 2030. For perspective, 50 GW is larger than the total electric generation capacity in Pennsylvania, which has a population of 13 million people and is the fifth most-populous state in America.

Big Tech understands the looming power crunch, and all of the big tech players — Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta — are spending billions of dollars to revive old nuclear plants and to scale up SMRs. Furthermore, this week, OpenAI said it may require 20 GW of power to accommodate the soaring demands of ChatGPT, which now has about 700 million weekly users.

According to one estimate, the SMR market could be worth $150 billion between now and 2040. Another estimate put it at nearly twice that number. Whatever number is the right one, it’s clear that the companies that can commercialize and deploy their reactors will be able to tap into a domestic market that sells $500 billion worth of juice every year and a global electricity business with annual sales of about $2.5 trillion.

Given the enormity of the electricity sector, and Big Tech’s insatiable thirst for power, it’s easy to see how the winners of the SMR race could eventually take in billions of dollars in revenue.

I’ve been writing about SMRs since 2008. Since then, I’ve seen the idea go from fringe to mainstream. However, the harsh reality is that there are far too many companies attempting to commercialize SMRs. The International Atomic Energy Agency estimates there are “more than 90 SMR designs.” The contenders are pushing a dizzying array of sizes, fuels, and strategies. Given my own experience in trying to understand the SMR market, I realized that there had to be a better way to research and understand this business.

Toward that end, I have created, with the stalwart assistance of my son and ace researcher, Jacob Bryce, a new publication available exclusively for my paid Substack subscribers — SMR Intelligence US.

As you will see, it’s a long and detailed compendium of more than two dozen US-based SMR companies, providing specifics about their reactors, fuel types, outputs, funding, recent news, and other relevant information. Additionally, we have summed the amount of money they have raised. We have also compiled a list of publicly traded pure-play SMR companies, such as NuScale and Oklo, along with their respective market capitalizations. Additionally, we have compiled a list of the publicly traded non-pure-play SMR contenders, including GE Vernova and BWX Technologies, along with their corresponding market caps.

This is the first of two compendia on SMRs. Today, we’re launching SMR Intelligence US. We will release a compendium of the global market in the coming weeks with the publication of SMR Intelligence Global. We plan to publish regular updates to each compendium along with the latest news in the SMR sector.

Before jumping into the compendium, I have a request: Jacob and I have spent more than two weeks compiling all the information in SMR Intelligence US. Given the amount of time and effort we put into it, please refrain from sharing the compendium with non-paying subscribers. I want to reserve access to this information for paying customers. Thanks in advance for your consideration.

Now, with that out of the way, let’s look at SMR Intelligence US.