X-Energy sold 44.3 million Class A shares at $23 each. Above the $16-$19 retail rangeand began trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker XE on April 24. The company has $1.8 billion in upfront equity, a $500 million Series C-1 led by Amazon, and a binding commitment to buy up to 5 gigawatts of nuclear power from Amazon through 2039.
X-EnergyThe Amazon-backed Rockville, Maryland-based developer of small modular reactors raised $1.02 billion in its initial public offering on April 23, 2026, pricing its increased offer at $23 per share, 21% above the market’s range of $16-19. \
The company sold 44.3 million Class A shares and began trading on the Nasdaq Global Options Market on April 24 under the ticker XE.
The IPO is the largest public market debut to date by a leading nuclear company and comes at a time when demand for electricity from artificial intelligence data centers, manufacturing recovery and electrification make reliable, carbon-free baseload one of the most commercially pressing infrastructure challenges in the United States.
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The prices tell their own story. X-Energy launched an investor roadshow with a target range of $16-$19, implying total revenue of up to $814 million.
The closing price of $23 represents a 21% premium over that range and total revenue of $1.02 billion, a figure that would require selling more shares than originally planned. Cathie Wood’s theme fund, ARK Investment Management, has expressed interest in buying up to $105 million in shares at the IPO price.
The oversubscription and premiums reflect investors’ belief in the nuclear renaissance story, which has been accelerating since the big tech companies began producing long-ago stocks. nuclear power purchase agreements.
Amazon’s role is central to X-Energy’s story. The company led X-Energy’s $500 million Series C-1 and committed to buy up to 5 gigawatts of nuclear power from the company by 2039, acting as both a source of revenue and a validation signal for the underlying technology.
For context, 5 gigawatts is roughly the output of five large conventional nuclear power plants, or roughly equivalent to the electricity demand of a medium-sized American city.
Amazon’s nuclear bet is driven by AI arithmetic: its data centers require large, predictable amounts of electricity that renewables, no storage, can’t supply around the clock.
Nuclear power, particularly the small modular reactors developed by X-Energy, offer carbon-free baseload generation in a physically compact space.
X-Energy’s core technology is the Xe-100, a pebble-bed modular reactor design that the company has been developing since its founding in 2009 by Kamal Gaffarian. Xe-100 is designed to produce approximately 80 megawatts of thermal energy per unit, with four units typically placed together as a 320 MW plant.
The gravel bed design uses uranium-clad fuel spheres rather than conventional fuel rods, which provides the company’s unique safety features: if the reactor overheats, the reaction slows down naturally without requiring active cooling intervention.
The NRC was involved in the pre-implementation review of the Xe-100 design. X-Energy also produces vertically integrated advanced nuclear fuel that reduces supply chain dependency.
According to PitchBook, the IPO raised more than $1.8 billion in private capital over multiple rounds that included Amazon as well as strategic investors.
Founder and chairman Kamal Ghaffarian will retain control of 61% of the combined company’s Class B shares, giving it voting control despite the public shake-up. Ares Management Corp has a significant stake.
Proceeds from the IPO will be used to accelerate reactor development, expand fuel production capabilities and finance the commercialization of the Xe-100 toward a first deployment that X-Energy envisions for the early 2030s.
The larger context is the most important element. X-Energy’s IPO is not an isolated incident. Microsoft has agreed to restart Unit 1 of Three Mile Island with Constellation Energy to supply data centers. Google signs deals with Kairos Power for SMR power.
Meta and Oracle have also made commitments on nuclear power. The pattern is consistent: hyperscalers with rapidly growing AI computing footprints are entering into long-term, utility-scale power purchase agreements with nuclear programmers because no other technology can reliably provide carbon-free baseload electricity at the scale and predictability required by AI infrastructure.
In a client note published on April 17, analyst Vikram Bagri said the IPO has begun “Suggests continued appetite among investors for small modular reactors”that’s something, as evidenced by its $1.02 billion top-line debut.
