Meta locks in 6+ GW of nuclear power to feed its AI data centers

Meta just made one of the biggest bets yet that nuclear will power the AI boom.

The company has signed long‑term deals with three nuclear providers—Vistra, Oklo and TerraPower—for more than 6 gigawatts (GW) of electricity to run its data centers in the U.S.

That’s utility‑scale power, on par with several large nuclear plants combined.

Three suppliers, two strategies

Meta’s announcement bundles three very different kinds of nuclear deals:

• Vistra – a major U.S. power producer selling output from existing reactors
• Oklo – a young small modular reactor (SMR) startup
• TerraPower – Bill Gates–co‑founded SMR and advanced nuclear company

The deals follow a request for proposals Meta issued in December 2024, where it asked for partners that could add 1–4 GW of new capacity by the early 2030s. Much of this power will move through PJM Interconnection, the massive grid that spans 13 Mid‑Atlantic and Midwestern states and is already crowded with data centers.

Vistra: immediate impact from legacy plants

Vistra’s 20‑year power purchase agreement is the fastest way for Meta to get low‑carbon baseload power.

• Meta will buy 2.1 GW from two existing Ohio nuclear plants: Perry and Davis‑Besse.
• As part of the deal, Vistra will add capacity at both of those plants plus its Beaver Valley plant in Pennsylvania.
• Those upgrades will deliver an additional 433 megawatts (MW), scheduled to come online in the early 2030s.

Electricity from reactors that are already built and operating is generally among the cheapest firm power resources on the grid, which means the Vistra tranche is almost certainly the lowest‑cost piece of Meta’s nuclear package.

Financial terms weren’t disclosed, but the economics here are straightforward: keep existing plants running harder and longer, and sell that dependable output to hyperscalers that can’t afford to have their AI clusters blink.

Oklo: Meta backs a high‑risk SMR startup

The second deal is a straight bet on an unproven SMR player.

Meta will buy 1.2 GW from Oklo, which is promising to start sending power to the grid as early as 2030.

• Oklo went public via SPAC in 2023.
• It already has a large agreement with data center operator Switch.
• But it has struggled to get its reactor design approved by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

For Meta, that’s a clear regulatory risk. For Oklo, it’s the opportunity it’s been waiting for.

Oklo’s Aurora Powerhouse reactors each produce 75 MW. To meet Meta’s 1.2 GW contract, the company will need to build more than a dozen reactors at a site planned in Pike County, Ohio.

The broader SMR thesis is on the line here: build lots of smaller, standardized reactors and drive down cost via manufacturing scale. It’s a “plausible hypothesis,” as the TechCrunch piece notes, but one that still hasn’t been tested in the real world.

Oklo’s own target costs land in the $80–$130 per megawatt‑hour range for later units. Early builds are expected to be higher.

TerraPower: advanced nuclear plus built‑in storage

The most technically ambitious piece of Meta’s plan comes from TerraPower, the advanced nuclear startup co‑founded by Bill Gates.

TerraPower aims to deliver electricity to Meta starting around 2032.

Its design:

• Uses molten sodium to move heat from the reactor to the generator.
• Integrates an energy storage system where superheated salt can be held in insulated tanks when demand is low and tapped when demand spikes.

Each reactor:

• Generates 345 MW of electricity.
• Comes with storage able to deliver an additional 100–500 MW for more than five hours.

TerraPower is already working with GE Hitachi on its first commercial plant in Wyoming and appears to be navigating the NRC process more smoothly than some rivals.

Under the Meta deal:

• The first two reactors dedicated to Meta would provide 690 MW.
• Meta has rights to buy six more, for a total of 2.8 GW of nuclear capacity and 1.2 GW of storage.

If exercised, that would make Meta one of TerraPower’s anchor customers for a whole fleet of advanced reactors.

TerraPower’s long‑term cost target: $50–$60 per megawatt‑hour for later plants. Again, first‑of‑a‑kind units will be more expensive.

AI is forcing a rethink of energy strategy

The through‑line here is AI.

Training large models and running inference at scale have turned data centers into some of the hungriest power users on the grid. At the same time, tech companies have made climate commitments that make it harder to simply fall back on gas‑fired generation.

Nuclear offers something wind and solar can’t on their own: 24/7 carbon‑free baseload that maps neatly to always‑on AI workloads.

But nuclear also comes with:

• Regulatory risk (especially for startups like Oklo).
• Construction risk and delays for first‑of‑a‑kind plants.
• Uncertain SMR economics, where the promised cost curve is still theoretical.

By splitting its bets across existing reactors, early SMRs, and more advanced designs with storage, Meta is effectively building a diversified nuclear portfolio for the 2030s and beyond.

And with more than 6 GW now spoken for, it’s sending a clear signal to the rest of Big Tech: if you want to keep scaling AI, you’ll need to lock down serious, long‑duration power—fast.