Nuclear startup X-energy is officially in the IPO push mode. The company began its investor roadshow Wednesday, working toward a public listing with a target price set between $16 and $19 per share, according to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. If the stock lands at the high end, X-energy could net about $814 million.
The timing isn’t random. X-energy and a wider group of fission-focused startups have been catching a renewed wave of attention as electricity demand climbs—fuelled in part by AI data centers and societywide electrification. You can almost feel the industry’s collective urgency in the way these deals are moving, even if the tech itself still needs years of momentum.
Amazon, meanwhile, is one of the biggest names in X-energy’s corner. The tech giant led a $500 million Series C-1 round and has pledged to buy as much as 5 gigawatts of nuclear power from the company by 2039. That kind of commitment matters when a startup is trying to convince investors it can turn prototypes into something that actually ships, generates power, and survives the long stretch between testing and full deployment.
The IPO is also a potential relief valve for earlier investors. X-energy has reportedly raised about $1.8 billion into the company, and it had previously tried to go public through a reverse merger with a special purpose acquisition company—but the deal was canceled in 2023 as the SPAC craze petered out. So yeah, this attempt comes with history. Not the best kind, but not exactly avoidable either.
At the heart of X-energy’s pitch is its reactor design: a high-temperature, gas-cooled setup. Inside, uranium is encased in spheres of ceramic and carbon and cooled by helium gas. The heat then gets routed to a steam turbine loop to generate electricity. The fuel design—known as TRISO—is expected to be safer than earlier fuel arrangements, though it isn’t widely used today. There’s a certain “try to be different” vibe in the engineering choices, and it’s hard not to wonder how much of investor confidence will ultimately hinge on whether those safety expectations translate into operational reality.
The company’s SEC filing also points to legal friction. X-energy says it’s tangled in a patent dispute with Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC), which went bankrupt in 2024 and whose assets were bought in bankruptcy to form Standard Nuclear. X-energy alleges that USNC infringed on its fuel fabrication patents, and that the matter hasn’t been resolved to its satisfaction during the bankruptcy proceedings. It’s not exactly the kind of uncertainty investors like to see right when a public offering is on the calendar.
Outside of China, new reactor development has largely stalled—delays and cost overruns have been constant themes. Small modular reactor startups are betting that shrinking the design can help them dodge some of the traditional headaches. None have built a power plant yet, though several are racing to meet a July 4 deadline set by the Trump administration. Even if some miss that date, they’re still likely to reach criticality—the moment when fission reactions become self-sustaining. But the trip from criticality to profitable plants will probably be slow. Mass manufacturing could lower costs, but it typically takes around a decade for the process to start paying dividends, and the number of reactors being planned might not be high enough to capture the full benefits.
X-energy expects that once its reactor production techniques reach maturity—what experts call “Nth-of-a-kind”—it can cut costs by 30% compared with the first-of-a-kind. Investors, Misryoum suggests, should pay very close attention to the first reactor’s price tag. That figure could make or break the company’s prospects—simple as that. And somewhere in all of this, behind the spreadsheets and filings, there’s the practical reality too: the long, meticulous grind from a lab-ready idea to something that runs day after day. A month ago, someone in the lab mentioned the steady hum of equipment during tests—small detail, but it sticks.
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