GridMarket and Deployable Energy partnered on 3GW microreactor pipeline for AI data centers, scaling modular nuclear beyond pilot phase.
GridMarket, a New York-based energy development platform, and Deployable Energy, a Houston-based microreactor developer, announced a partnership on July 7 to deploy more than 3GW of nuclear microreactors for data center customers through 2035. The companies are targeting 500MW of annual capacity starting in 2030, representing a $22.5 billion deployment pipeline for reactor manufacturing, siting, and installation.
The announcement follows Deployable Energy's Unity Nuclear Battery achieving zero-power criticality at Idaho National Laboratory on June 30, completing the milestone in approximately 150 days from project kickoff. The Unity became the third advanced microreactor to reach criticality under the DOE's Nuclear Energy Launch Pad initiative, which launched in March 2026. In a historic first, the U.S. achieved criticality in three unique advanced microreactor designs in a single month.
Under the partnership, GridMarket will connect its pipeline of data center and enterprise energy customers—which includes Fortune 500-2000 firms, data center operators, and hyperscalers—to Deployable Energy's reactor technology. The companies estimate the total lifetime energy contract value at approximately $145 billion over 40 years based on the full 3GW-plus deployment target.
Both companies plan to begin with a pilot demonstration before scaling to commercial volumes, though neither has disclosed specific sites or anchor tenants for the initial deployment.
The Unity Nuclear Battery is a 1MWe gas-cooled microreactor designed for factory manufacture and shipment inside a standard 20-foot shipping container. The reactor uses 4.95% enriched low-enriched uranium fuel with a helium cooling system and delivers electricity, heat, and cooling in a single package. The modular design allows units to be deployed in arrays, with notably reduced water intensity compared to conventional power plants—a potential advantage for data center operators facing water-use scrutiny.
Achieving the 500MW annual production target would require manufacturing and deploying 500 units per year, an industrial-scale production challenge unprecedented in the nuclear industry. Deployable Energy has received NRC pre-application engagement status for early-stage regulatory review, though full NRC licensing for commercial deployment remains a multi-year process representing a key schedule risk for the 2030 target.
The partnership enters a crowded field of nuclear-for-data-centers proposals. Amazon, Google, Oracle, and Meta have all announced nuclear power procurement strategies in the past two years, though most have focused on larger small modular reactors (50-300MW) rather than sub-5MW microreactors. The microreactor approach offers behind-the-meter deployment at individual data center sites rather than grid-scale generation.
GridMarket CEO Nick Davis framed the partnership around the power availability challenge facing the sector. "Power availability has become the defining challenge facing data center development today," Davis said.