NuScale maintains a $4 billion market valuation despite generating only $10.7 million in sales, reflecting investor bets on future SMR deployment.
By mid-2009, U.S. utilities had filed applications for 26 new nuclear reactors; only Vogtle Units 3 and 4 were ever completed. Those two units were originally estimated at $14 billion and ultimately cost more than $30 billion, entering service approximately seven years late. Today, NuScale Power (NYSE: SMR) carries a market capitalization of roughly $4.2 billion against trailing twelve-month revenue of just $10.7 million. In the second quarter alone, the company generated $75,000 in revenue and announced a new $750 million at-the-market stock-sale program.
With such a wide gap between valuation and current sales, the market is pricing in what the small modular reactor (SMR) developer might eventually build—specifically, reactors for utilities and artificial intelligence data-center operators now shopping for around-the-clock power. That is not automatically a mistake, but the United States recently ran the new-reactor experiment, and those results provide essential context before committing capital. In the late 2000s, the country launched what was termed a nuclear renaissance. By mid-2009, utilities had submitted combined license applications to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for 26 new reactors across 17 sites.
Georgia’s Vogtle Units 3 and 4, initially projected for commercial operation in 2016 and 2017, finally entered service in July 2023 and spring 2024, respectively. The final price tag exceeded $30 billion, representing a seven-year delay and more than double the original budget. South Carolina’s V.C. Summer expansion progressed far enough to break ground before utilities halted the project in 2017. No other proposed projects yielded an operating reactor; some were withdrawn or suspended, and several secured licenses only to let them lapse. When Vogtle’s second new unit came online in 2024, no other reactor was under construction anywhere in the country. The failure mode was never the underlying technology. Instead, nuclear projects died in delivery—the years and billions spent between application and a functioning plant.
NuScale’s pitch directly targets that delivery bottleneck. Its 77-megawatt reactor modules are manufactured in a factory rather than assembled on-site, and they can be deployed in configurations of up to 12 modules per plant. The company holds the only SMR design certification issued by the NRC and received approval for an updated design in May 2025. It also claims to have established a supply chain of more than 60 partners and executed over 30 supply agreements. However, a full 12-module plant tops out at 924 megawatts, which is less than the output of a single new Vogtle unit. As CEO John Hopkins stated in the company’s second-quarter release, “[T]he question for off-takers is no longer whether to go with nuclear -- it is which technology can actually deliver, and when.”
The financials reflect a company still waiting for its commercial market to materialize. Second-quarter revenue fell to $75,000, down from $8.1 million a year earlier, when NuScale was still collecting engineering fees from its Romanian project work. That work concluded in late 2025, and revenue for the first half of 2026 totaled just $640,000. The company reported a second-quarter net loss attributable to Class A shareholders of $47.5 million. While NuScale holds $1.9 billion in cash and investments—providing a multi-year runway—that cushion has been largely funded by shareholders. The weighted-average Class A share count nearly tripled year over year to approximately 365 million shares, prompting the addition of the $750 million stock-sale program on Tuesday.
For a growth stock like NuScale, the previous cycle establishes a clear benchmark: interest and study agreements are insufficient; a signed, funded order is required. Neither of NuScale’s two leading opportunities has crossed that threshold yet. The Tennessee Valley Authority is in discussions with ENTRA1 Energy, NuScale’s commercialization partner, toward a definitive power purchase agreement that the company says would potentially represent the largest nuclear deployment program in U.S. history. Meanwhile, in Romania, the six-module RoPower project—the most advanced SMR effort in Europe according to NuScale—is still navigating conditions tied to a shareholder vote needed to advance the initiative. Both could reach that stage. This cycle benefits from a new class of buyer in data-center operators, who face urgent power demands and possess deep pockets. Yet the last boom featured committed utilities, federal backing, and 26 proposed reactors on file, ultimately producing only two reactors, both delayed and severely over budget.
A $4.2 billion valuation on $10.7 million of trailing sales is arguably priced for the moment orders arrive. In the last cycle, securing the order turned out to be the easy part.
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