Advanced nuclear firm Aalo Atomics has formed a strategic partnership with energy-first AI infrastructure company Crusoe to develop a nuclear-powered “AI Factory” data center in a project that would combine Aalo’s advanced reactor development program at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) with Crusoe’s modular AI data center platform.
The companies said on July 30 that under the commercial partnership, Aalo will initially power a Crusoe Spark modular data center running Crusoe Cloud at INL in 2027 as a proof of concept. Over the longer term, Aalo and Crusoe said they intend to deploy Aalo Pods and Aalo’s 50-MWe extra-modular reactor (XMR) power plants at Crusoe data centers by the end of 2029.
The announcement unveils a specific data center partner for Aalo as the Austin-based nuclear firm begins the next phase of its INL campaign. As POWER reported earlier this month, Aalo’s Critical Test Reactor (CTR) reached criticality at INL on July 4, making it the fourth DOE-authorized advanced reactor criticality in about a month. The CTR is a zero-power physics reactor, built to validate core physics, control behavior, instrumentation, and operating procedures before Aalo moves to full-power operation through Aalo-X.
Aalo has since said work has begun on “Project Ascension,” its second reactor at INL and a 10-MWe commercial-scale system designed to produce electricity for an on-site data center in the coming months. The company has said the Project Ascension unit is being built next to the CTR and that lessons from both projects are expected to inform the final commercial Aalo Pod design, including affordability and mass manufacturability, while the CTR will continue to support testing in the coming years.
Aalo’s Staged Reactor Program at Idaho National Laboratory
Aalo is pursuing a staged development model. The CTR is intended to test the fueled core, graphite, control rods, instrumentation, fuel loading, and operating procedures at near-zero power. Nearby, Aalo is assembling Aalo-0, a full-scale, non-nuclear sodium test system designed to circulate 60,000 pounds of sodium under operating conditions and validate heat-transport and power-conversion systems. Data from those two campaigns are intended to feed Aalo-X, the company’s planned 30-MWth/10-MWe sodium-cooled demonstration plant at INL. Aalo-X, in turn, is intended to prove the 10-MWe Aalo-1 reactor for the company’s commercial 50-MWe Aalo Pod, which would use five 10-MWe reactors connected to a shared turbine. Under the Crusoe partnership, that pathway now includes a near-term data center load from first a Crusoe Spark modular data center running Crusoe Cloud at INL in 2027, followed by planned Aalo Pod deployments at Crusoe data centers by the end of 2029.
Aalo introduced the Aalo Pod in April 2025 as a 50-MWe XMR purpose-built for data centers. The company’s concept uses five 10-MWe Aalo-1 reactors paired to a shared turbine, arranged as 50-MW modular blocks that can scale to larger campuses. In its product materials, Aalo says the Pod is designed for on-site, grid-parallel, hybrid, or independent operation, a compact footprint of 100 MW on less than five acres, limited water requirements, and compatibility with conventional data center electrical equipment. The company has also marketed the XMR category as “extra modular,” meaning both the reactor and the rest of the plant are factory-built in modules, a design choice intended to reduce field construction and match data center growth increments.
Aalo has said it expects future Pod power solutions to be delivered within 12 months from order placement, followed by additional Pods on shorter repeat intervals, but those claims remain contingent on successful Aalo-X operation, factory scale-up, regulatory approvals, fuel supply, site-specific requirements, and customer deployment conditions.
“As one of only four companies to reach criticality by President Trump’s deadline for companies in the DOE Reactor Pilot Program, we are now well positioned for not only the full power operation of our 10 MWe Aalo-X reactor, but also the deployment of the Aalo Pod to power commercial data centers,” said Matt Loszak, CEO, Aalo Atomics. “We are now the only nuclear technology company to design and build a nuclear reactor fueled to produce 10 MW of electricity—an achievement that positions Aalo as the premier power provider for the modern data center.”
Crusoe to Integrate Advanced Nuclear Into Growing AI Data Center Portfolio
For Crusoe, an “AI factory” company specializing in combining large-scale energy sourcing, AI-optimized data centers, and cloud infrastructure, the Aalo partnership adds an advanced nuclear test case to a power strategy that already spans grid-connected campuses, natural gas generation, battery systems, modular data centers, and AI cloud services. The company said in June that its contracted AI infrastructure capacity was approaching 5 GW across data centers and cloud. Its 2026 announcements include a 900-MW AI Factory campus in Abilene, Texas, to support Microsoft AI infrastructure, a 1-GW AI data center campus in Childress, Texas, with Lancium, a roughly 750-MW U.S. power agreement with Bergen Engines, and a 12-GWh iron-air battery agreement with Form Energy; and a 5-GW AI UPS deployment agreement with ON.energy across multiple hyperscale campuses.
The Aalo agreement also follows Crusoe’s earlier nuclear-related partnership with Blue Energy at the Port of Victoria, Texas, where Crusoe is expected to serve as an early data center offtaker for a gas-to-nuclear power model. As POWER reported in June, Blue Energy, GE Vernova, and Crusoe are advancing a phased model that would use natural gas generation to supply AI data center load earlier, then transition to SMR power as nuclear units come online. Blue Energy has since announced a strategic equity investment from Constellation Technology Ventures, the venture arm of the nation’s largest nuclear operator, to accelerate commercialization of its shipyard manufacturing and project financing model for new nuclear.
Unlike the Blue Energy model, which uses gas generation as a bridge to later SMR deployment for a large AI campus, the Aalo-Crusoe project would test a smaller, nuclear-first pairing between an on-site advanced reactor system and Crusoe’s modular Spark data center platform at INL.
Crusoe Spark is the company’s modular AI factory product, manufactured at its new 352,000-square-foot Crusoe Spark Factory in Brighton, Colorado. Crusoe says Spark is a turnkey, prefabricated modular data center platform that integrates power, cooling, remote monitoring, fire suppression, and high-density racks into repeatable units. The company says Spark deployments can scale from hundreds of kilowatts to tens or hundreds of megawatts, operate as stand-alone computing hubs or grouped compute clusters, and be delivered in as little as three months. The company has also described Spark as energy-flexible, designed to pair with solar and repurposed EV batteries, grid power, natural gas generation, or small modular nuclear reactors. The first factory-produced Spark modules are expected in the third quarter of 2026.
“The next generation of AI infrastructure demands power that is reliable, abundant, clean and at scale, and Aalo’s nuclear reactors are built to meet that need,” said Cully Cavness, co-Founder, president and Chief Strategy Officer, Crusoe. “One of Crusoe’s core values is to ‘bend the arc of energy toward sustainability,’ and within that value we embrace the principle of using Crusoe’s market position to support and accelerate energy innovation. In line with our core values, we look forward to Aalo and Crusoe jointly demonstrating to the industry the first AI data center powered by a small modular nuclear reactor.”
—Sonal C. Patel is a POWER senior editor (@sonalcpatel, @POWERmagazine).
