By Gregory Zuckerman
Nuclear-energy company X-Energy scrapped a public offering less than three years ago after investors showed little interest.
Now, the company is set to go public Friday at a valuation above $9 billion as artificial intelligence drives demand for new sources of electricity. Its high-profile backers include Amazon and Ken Griffin, the founder of hedge-fund firm Citadel.
Griffin is set to score paper gains of about $300 million from a $100 million personal investment he made just a year-and-a-half ago, according to people familiar with the matter.
Investment firm Ares Management is another huge winner, other people familiar with the matter said. The firm is set to make more than four times the over-$160 million it invested in the company, the people said, noting that Ares's co-founder, David Kaplan, and a partner, Allyson Satin, were personally involved.
X-Energy priced its shares at $23 apiece Thursday and expects to raise over $1 billion in its planned debut Friday. It is listing on the Nasdaq under the ticker "XE."
Founded in 2009 by aerospace veteran Kamal "Kam" Ghaffarian, X-Energy spent years developing industrial-size modular nuclear reactors to produce energy for factories and other industrial facilities. By 2022, the Maryland-based company had a deal to sell reactors to the chemical-company Dow's facility in Seadrift, Texas, but investors worried that its potential market was limited.
In December of that year, Ares invested $30 million in the company, along with two hedge funds, aiming to take the company public. But a merger with Ares Acquisition, a blank check company backed by the Los Angeles firm, was scuttled in October 2023 as investors cooled on special-purpose acquisition companies and became cautious on new issues. After the SPAC fell through, Ares added to investment by providing new financing.
X-Energy's fortunes improved as companies began searching for new sources of energy amid the growth of artificial intelligence. In 2024, Amazon.com, which has backed nuclear-power projects across the U.S. and is eager to get energy from small, modular reactors, became both an investor and a client. Amazon has said it received a commitment of more than five gigawatts of new nuclear energy from X-Energy.
Griffin made his investment in X-Energy in the fall of 2024. Steve Cohen's Point72, Jane Street, Cathie Wood's ARK Invest and the University of Michigan also made investments, X-Energy has said. They all stand to benefit from Friday's IPO. Amazon owns close to 20% of X-Energy.
The investors can't lock in profits until they sell their shares. And it isn't clear how the stock will fare on the public market. X-Energy is still years away from completing a reactor and obtaining regulatory licensing. It has competitors racing to provide nuclear power, including TerraPower, backed by Bill Gates, Oklo and NuScale Power.
Hyperscalers including Amazon, Microsoft and Meta have a growing demand for electricity to power massive data centers and manage AI processing, sparking enthusiasm for nuclear power.
Write to Gregory Zuckerman at Gregory.Zuckerman@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 24, 2026 10:32 ET (14:32 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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