Standard Nuclear came from Stealth with $ 42 million in financing on Wednesday to make advanced nuclear fuel.
Except that standard nuclear is not a whole new company. It was previously built on assets purchased at an auction after the bankruptcy of the Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC) for $ 28 million. The CEO of the new company, Kurt Terrani, was vice president at USNC.
The financing round was led by the decisive point with the participation of Andreessen Horowitz, Crucible Capital, Fundomo and Washington Harbor Partners.
Standard Nuclear says that it has $ 100 million in non-binding fuel sales before 2027, and that it works with customers, including nano nuclear energy, which other USNC assets acquired in the bankruptcy auction, and Radiant Industries, another decisive point portfolio company. In a statement to JS, Standard Nuclear recognized the bankruptcy purchase and said that “the launch of his timeline” accelerated “.
USNC had worked on commercializing a kind of nuclear fuel that is known as Triso, a uranium fuel pellet coated in layers of carbon and ceramic materials. The poppy seed format particles are considered more resistant to melting and they can be loaded into larger bulbs or cylinders.
Triso is an old idea – it has been around since the 1950s – although the fuel is not used much today. That can change because various startups, including Google-Striden Kairos and Amazon supported by X-Energy, are planning to use Triso in their reactors.
Although USNC was founded on a relatively well -known technology, the path of the company was tumultuous.
USNC was considerably funded by one investor, Richard Hollis Helms and his family, who had plowed $ 100 million in the USNC over the years, along with $ 24.7 million in loans. For what was in fact a startup with one investors, the company had a vast business model, which not only developed Triso-Nuclear fuel, but also two different reactor designs, a nuclear space drive and a nuclear heating source for spacecraft.
It is not clear where the interest of helms for nuclear from the next generation came from. He started his career at the CIA as an arabist in the middle east. His wife was apparently also a spy: “While he lied to their children and pretended to have routine office jobs, Richard and Teresa together copied their international clandestine career,” death message said; He died in May 2024. “Once for sure that their son would not run and tell everyone, they broke the news to their children by showing them the film ‘True Lies’.
Helms withdrew from the CIA after 9/11 “[w]They did not impose the agency on the in -depth expertise of his and his colleagues, “said his death advertisement. He used his retirement to find two national security -related companies: Abraxis, that sold For $ 124 million in 2010 and NTrepid, which is still being held private.
In 2022 USNC went looking for investors to participate in a Serie A, according to court requests. But the company had been slow to generate considerable income, and when Helms died, the debts of the company were set up. Post On Reddit Imagine that the company did not have a payroll at the time.
USNC declared bankruptcy in October 2024. Standard nuclear, led at that time through decisive point -founder Thomas Hendrix, went one stalking horse bid For the fuel -related assets from USNC for $ 28 million the same month. The sale is completed in February, including the property that today serves as standard activities of Standard Nuclear.
