Startup The Nuclear Company will pay Palantir $100M to develop software for the nuclear industry

Palantir, an American data analytics software developer, has signed a $100 million deal with The Nuclear Company, a startup that designs nuclear facilities, Bloomberg reports.

The startup will pay this money over the next five years to develop artificial intelligence software for the nuclear industry. Mike Gallagher, head of defense at Palantir, said that the United States will need more nuclear energy in competition with China.

The goal, Gallagher said, is to help build nuclear power plants cheaper, safer and faster than China is doing. According to BNEF, as of this month, 61 nuclear power plants are under construction around the world: 26 in Russia, 25 in China, and none in the United States.

“The fact is, we cannot win a strategic competition with China unless we restore the ability to build nuclear technology,” Gallagher said in an interview with Bloomberg.

Over the past 30 years, the United States has built two power plants: Vogtle Units 3 and 4. The construction lasted 15 years. In addition to strict regulation, bureaucracy also had an impact: employees had to fill out hundreds of thousands of documents.

Using Palantir’s software, The Nuclear Company digitizes all the documentation used during the construction of previous plants so that when delays occur in the supply chain, the teams on the ground know about them in real time.

The startup wants to start supplying electricity in the 2030s. But they are not building any nuclear plants yet.

In May, President Donald Trump signed executive orders that call for 10 large nuclear reactors to be built by 2030 and reach 400 gigawatts of capacity by 2050 – more than four times the current U.S. nuclear capacity.

According to Nuclear Company CEO Jonathan Webb, the restoration of the nuclear industry is important not only for national security reasons, but also for defense in general:

“We have to get back to building, because if we don’t, China and Russia will do it,” he said.

In April, NATO acquired the Maven military system based on artificial intelligence from Palantir. The cost of the deal was not disclosed. However, it was probably one of the most significant defense contracts of the American company this year.