Meta said it has signed major nuclear energy deals with Vistra, TerraPower, and Oklo to supply up to 6.6 gigawatts of clean power by 2035. These agreements surpass comparable promises from competitors Google, Microsoft, and Amazon and constitute the largest corporate nuclear power purchase to date. As IT giants scramble to secure electricity for the AI boom, Meta Platforms Inc. is poised to become one of the largest corporate consumers of nuclear power in the world.
A city with almost 5 million houses could be powered by the agreements, which might wind up totalling more than 6 gigawatts. The agreements include buying power from three current Vistra Corp. plants and supporting a number of compact reactors that Oklo Inc., financed by Sam Altman, and TerraPower LLC, supported by Bill Gates, intend to construct over the course of the next ten years.
In New York, Vistra shares were up as much as 16% on Friday. Oklo saw a 19% increase. Meta saw a gain of up to 0.9%.
The agreements highlight Big Tech’s rush to secure energy in the face of the escalating competition for supremacy in artificial intelligence. Grid Strategies, an energy consultancy organisation, projects that US electricity consumption would increase by at least 30% by 2030, with data centres accounting for the majority of this increase. Microsoft, Alphabet Inc., and Amazon.com Inc. have all inked agreements to use nuclear reactor power. Meta’s efforts now outweigh such plans.
Although Meta did not reveal the contracts’ overall worth, contracts of this magnitude may likely bring in billions of dollars for electricity producers. The new agreements come after a separate June contract to obtain energy from a nuclear site owned by Constellation Energy Corp.
The agreements made public on Friday, according to Urvi Parekh, Meta’s head of global energy, aim to allay worries about the closure of current nuclear power facilities and highlight the necessity of early investment to promote future nuclear power.
In an interview, Parekh stated that the corporation is still dedicated to “low-carbon energy” but that “there isn’t a one size fits all approach that’s gonna get us to where the US needs to go in order for nuclear to be a material part of the energy mix.”
Hyperscalers that have long promised to go green have recently discussed or sought partnerships with natural gas-fired plants generators that are often far easier and faster to build, despite the fact that rising US power demand for data centres has helped rekindle interest in nuclear energy. There is a greater need for energy since data centres can be operational much more quickly than nuclear facilities, which typically take ten years to develop and build.
With over 10.5 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity, Microsoft Corp. and the green energy division of Brookfield Asset Management inked the largest corporate clean-energy purchase deal ever made public in 2024. At the time, the anticipated value of that agreement was as high as $17 billion.
According to BloombergNEF, the cost of building new nuclear capacity can range from $13 per watt for traditional reactors to $24 per watt for the cutting-edge technologies being developed by businesses like Oklo and TerraPower. At the highest level, the capital expenses for six gigawatts of new advanced nuclear power would exceed $120 billion.
And according to Rob Barnett, an analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence, purchasing such power could cost Meta between $141 and $220 per megawatt hour for nuclear energy as opposed to roughly $50 to $60 for gas, wind, or solar.
In an interview, Barnett remarked, “That’s a pretty hefty number.” However, because nuclear has many benefits, tech businesses are prepared to pay for it. First, unlike renewables, it operates continuously. Additionally, unlike petrol, which can fluctuate greatly based on international politics and other concerns, fuel prices are generally steady. Lastly, utilising carbon-free power would assist Meta in achieving its ecological goals, which are still crucial even though recent changes have made them less urgent for some businesses.
Barnett stated that big tech companies are still talking about this, while other sectors of the economy are backing away.
Jefferies LLC estimates that Meta is paying at least $100 per megawatt-hour for electricity when all three deals are considered together.
Following Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg’s repeated promises to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in AI and the infrastructure required to enable it before the end of the decade, Meta has entered into new agreements.
His two biggest infrastructure projects are “Hyperion,” a rural Louisiana project that might grow to five gigawatts and go online in a few more years, and “Prometheus,” a 1-gigawatt data centre cluster near New Albany, Ohio, which is anticipated to go online this year.
At least three natural gas plants will fuel the Hyperion project, which is anticipated to be Meta’s largest AI-focused data centre. As Meta works to expand the project, its utility, Entergy Corp., has sought to connect more natural gas generation to the grid.
The Ohio-based Prometheus project will also benefit from the nuclear agreements made public on Friday. Regarding the deals’ financial parameters, Meta refuses to comment.
Parekh stated that it could hinder AI’s ability to develop more quickly if we can’t produce more electricity. “The big picture is about making sure that, rather than having restrictions on what options and technologies can be added to the grid, we have more solutions as AI continues to grow.”
Meta will purchase energy, including more than 2.1 gigawatts of operating generation, from the Davis-Besse and Perry reactors in Ohio as part of the arrangement with Vistra. Additionally, it will receive an additional 433 megawatts of energy from its Beaver Valley facility in Pennsylvania as well as from planned upgrades to increase output from those two plants.
The largest US grid run by PJM Interconnection LLC, which serves over 67 million people from the Midwest to the mid-Atlantic, will continue to be supplied by the Vistra nuclear units.
In a different agreement, Oklo will provide Meta with up to 1.2 gigawatts of power from reactors Oklo plans to construct in Ohio, the first of which might be operational as early as 2030. Oklo is working on a 75 megawatt reactor, but federal officials must yet give their clearance. A prepayment is also part of the arrangement with Meta, mainly to assist Oklo with gasoline purchases.
Additionally, Meta has committed to supporting TerraPower’s development of two reactors that might produce up to 690 megawatts and be delivered as early as 2032. Additionally, Meta obtained the energy rights from up to six other prospective reactor projects, totalling 2.1 gigawatts of power.
Last year, Zuckerberg told investors that he believes under-spending on AI technology poses a greater risk to his business than overspending. His plan is to “aggressively front-load building capacity” in anticipation of a momentous occasion when Meta achieves its objective of “superintelligence,” a phrase used to describe AI that surpasses humans in a variety of jobs.
In an interview with Chris Levesque, CEO of TerraPower, stated, “It’s obvious that nuclear energy has to be a big part of meeting the demand for power from AI.”
These multi-gigawatt agreements come after a 20-year contract to purchase 1,100 MW from the Clinton Clean Energy Centre in Illinois was struck with Constellation Energy in the middle of 2025.
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