Google partners with Kairos and GE Vernova on nuclear technology strategy for AI power supply, signaling commitment to zero-carbon baseload generation.

Google is betting on not one, but two nuclear technologies to keep the lights on at its data centers. The company has partnered with both Kairos Power and GE Vernova in a hedged bet on the future of small modular reactors. The company is pursuing a dual-reactor approach to power its AI-hungry data centers, with up to 500 megawatts of advanced nuclear capacity targeted by 2035.

The partnership with Kairos Power, announced in October 2024, targets up to 500 MW of capacity by 2035, using fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature small modular reactors — compact nuclear plants that use molten salt instead of water to transfer heat. The centerpiece of the Google-Kairos collaboration is the Hermes 2 demonstration project. Originally designed with 28 MW of output, the project got a significant upgrade in August 2025 when Google, Kairos, and the Tennessee Valley Authority signed a tri-party power purchase agreement that scaled Hermes 2's capacity to 50 MW. That PPA is structured to deliver power to Google facilities in Tennessee and Alabama, with commercial operations targeted for 2030.

The project hit a major milestone in early June 2026, when groundbreaking took place in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. That event marked what's being described as the first commercial advanced reactor project to break ground in North America.

Rather than Google buying a reactor and plugging it into its own grid, the TVA acts as an intermediary, purchasing the power and delivering it through existing infrastructure.

GE Vernova is also part of Google's strategy, bringing its BWRX-300 small modular reactor technology to the table. The BWRX-300 is a boiling water reactor design, a more conventional approach compared to Kairos's molten salt technology. The BWRX-300 was being considered for a project at the Clinch River site, also in Tennessee and also involving the TVA. That project has faced delays tied to political and governance issues at the federal utility.

Google's 500 MW target with Kairos alone is enough to power roughly 400,000 homes. The tri-party corporate PPA model that Google, Kairos, and the TVA established could become the standard playbook for how advanced nuclear gets financed and deployed in the US.

For investors, reactor developers like Kairos Power and GE Vernova stand to benefit from a growing pipeline of corporate customers willing to sign long-term agreements. Uranium miners and nuclear fuel suppliers could see increased demand as more SMRs move from blueprint to construction site. Utilities like the TVA, serving as intermediaries between tech buyers and reactor builders, may find themselves in an unexpectedly powerful negotiating position.

The fact that the Clinch River project involving GE Vernova's BWRX-300 has already hit governance-related delays at TVA is a reminder that even well-funded nuclear ambitions can stall for reasons unrelated to the technology itself. Investors watching this space should pay close attention to whether the 2030 commercial operations target for Hermes 2 holds.