Overview
Austin Startup Building Factory-Made Sodium Reactors
Matt Loszak (CEO) and Yasir Arafat (president and chief technology officer) founded Aalo Atomics in 2023. Arafat previously led design of MARVEL, the Department of Energy (DOE) microreactor at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). Aalo builds reactor modules at a 40,000-square-foot factory and headquarters in Austin, opened in August 2024 between downtown and Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.
Valor Equity Partners led a $100 million Series B in August 2025, with NRG Energy, Hitachi Ventures, Crosscut and others participating. Aalo says it has raised more than $300 million in total. Share filings dated September 2026, reported by Forge Global, show a Series C, though Aalo has not announced its terms.
| Company | Aalo Atomics |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Austin, Travis County |
| Founders | Matt Loszak, Yasir Arafat |
| Founded | 2023 |
| Reactor | Aalo-1, 10 MWe, sodium-cooled |
| Commercial plant | Aalo Pod, 50 MWe |
| Fuel | Uranium dioxide, Urenco enrichment |
| Test site | Idaho National Laboratory |
| New factory | Georgetown, Williamson County |
Product Line
Five 10 MWe Reactors Make One 50 MWe Pod
Each Aalo-1 is built in the factory, shipped as modules and set in a vessel of liquid sodium, which carries heat to a turbine. Five units share one turbine in an Aalo Pod. Fuel is uranium dioxide enriched to about five percent by Urenco and fabricated by GE Vernova's Global Nuclear Fuel, so the design avoids high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), whose short supply constrains several competing advanced reactors. Aalo's stated power cost target is three cents per kilowatt-hour, with no date set.
| Product | Output | Role | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aalo-X | 10 MWe | Test reactor at INL | Zero-power core critical July 4, 2026 |
| Ascension | 10 MWe | Second INL unit with on-site data center | Power and data center planned 2027 |
| Aalo-1 | 10 MWe | Factory-built commercial reactor | In development |
| Aalo Pod | 50 MWe | Five Aalo-1 units on one turbine | First commercial plant target |
Idaho
Aalo-X Met the July 4 Criticality Goal
Executive Order 14301, signed in May 2025, set a goal of at least three test reactors reaching criticality by July 4, 2026. A full-scale, zero-power core of the Aalo-X reached criticality at 12:20 a.m. Mountain time on July 4 under the DOE Reactor Pilot Program, the fourth DOE-authorized advanced reactor to do so after Antares Nuclear's Mark-0, Valar Atomics' Ward 250 and Deployable Energy's Unity. Arafat said the project went from groundbreaking to a sustained chain reaction in about eight months.
China leads in deployed small reactors. China National Nuclear Corporation's 125 MW Linglong One (ACP100) at Changjiang, Hainan, under construction since July 2021, is scheduled to start operation in 2026, and the HTR-PM high-temperature gas-cooled reactor at Shidao Bay entered commercial operation in December 2023.
Georgetown
Georgetown Plant Moves Reactor Production to Williamson County
Aalo filed with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (TDLR) on August 31, 2026 to renovate a 204,350-square-foot Georgetown warehouse into a $25 million machine shop and production floor. Groundbreaking is expected in November 2026, with completion in early 2028. Aalo has also described a factory of about one million square feet for mass production.
Georgetown places Aalo in the Georgetown-Hutto-Taylor corridor, near Samsung Taylor and data center campuses waiting on grid connections under ERCOT's large-load rules; see ERCOT Large Load Interconnection. Investor NRG Energy is one of the largest power generators in Texas.
Record
Dataset Record
- Sources
- Aalo Atomics, US Department of Energy, American Nuclear Society Nuclear News, TechCrunch, Business Wire, Axios Pro, Forge Global, Williamson County Sun, Connect CRE, Erik Townsend (Substack), China National Nuclear Corporation
- Last verified
- October 2026