X-energy Launches IPO Roadshow for Advanced Nuclear Startup, Targeting $16-$19 Per Share

Nuclear technology startup X-energy kicked off its investor roadshow on Wednesday as it advances toward its planned initial public offering, according to recent filings submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The firm has set an expected IPO price range of $16 to $19 per share, and if shares price at the top end of that range, the startup could raise roughly $814 million in net proceeds from the listing.

X-energy and its fellow advanced nuclear developers are currently benefiting from a resurgence of investor and industry interest in fission power, driven by skyrocketing global electricity demand fueled by the expansion of AI data centers and broad economy-wide electrification trends.

Cloud and e-commerce giant Amazon counts among X-energy’s largest strategic backers. The tech leader led the startup’s $500 million Series C-1 funding round, and has committed to purchasing up to 5 gigawatts of nuclear power from X-energy by 2039.

For X-energy’s existing backers, who have poured roughly $1.8 billion into the company to date according to data from PitchBook, the upcoming IPO will likely come as a welcome milestone. The company previously attempted to go public via a reverse merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), but the two sides scrapped the deal in 2023 amid the broader collapse of the global SPAC boom.

X-energy’s core product is a high-temperature, gas-cooled small modular reactor. Its design uses uranium fuel embedded in robust ceramic and carbon spheres, cooled by inert helium gas. The heated helium then transfers energy to a steam turbine system to generate electricity. The proprietary fuel design, called TRISO, is widely projected to be far safer than conventional nuclear fuel configurations, though it has not yet been deployed at large commercial scale today.

In its SEC filing, X-energy also disclosed that it is currently involved in an ongoing patent dispute with a bankrupt competitor. Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC) filed for bankruptcy in 2024, and its assets were acquired out of bankruptcy proceedings to launch a new entity called Standard Nuclear. X-energy alleges that USNC infringed on its fuel manufacturing patents, and claims the issue has not been resolved to the company’s satisfaction during USNC’s bankruptcy process.

Outside of China, large-scale new nuclear reactor development has largely ground to a halt over recent decades, held back by persistent project delays and massive cost overruns. A new wave of advanced nuclear startups argues that shrinking reactor designs into smaller, modular units will allow them to overcome many of the challenges that have plagued traditional large-scale nuclear projects.

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None of the current crop of small modular reactor (SMR) startups have completed construction of a full commercial power plant to date, though multiple firms are in a race to meet a July 4 development deadline set by the Trump administration. While most are expected to miss this arbitrary policy deadline, they still remain on track to reach criticality — the point at which a fission reaction becomes self-sustaining — in the near term.

Even after hitting the criticality milestone, the path from that milestone to building profitable, commercially viable nuclear power plants is expected to be long. Mass production of modular reactor units can drive down per-unit costs, but it typically takes roughly a decade of scaled production for these cost savings to translate into meaningful dividends. What’s more, while the total number of reactors these startups plan to build is higher than past attempts at new nuclear development, it may still not be large enough to unlock the full cost benefits of mass manufacturing.

X-energy projects that once its reactor production processes mature — a stage industry experts refer to as “Nth-of-a-kind” production, following the first-of-a-kind initial prototype unit — it will be able to cut per-unit costs by 30% compared to the first full-scale reactor. For prospective IPO investors, industry analysts note that the total cost of X-energy’s first commercial reactor will be a make-or-break metric for the company’s long-term commercial prospects.