Taking the Investment Pulse: Q4 2024

Blog

Markets & Finance

Kayley Deaton

February 6, 2025

President Trump’s energy dominance agenda made it clear that energy independence and national security will be taking center stage. Thankfully, there’s an energy source that checks both boxes—nuclear energy.

And the financial community clearly connected those dots, with nuclear-related stocks getting a boost on the heels of the president’s announcement for Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, who was confirmed earlier this week.

If you’re interested in more connecting of dots and you want to make a trip to New York City next week…NEI is hosting its third annual Nuclear Financing Summit in Times Square, with speakers from Google, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and more on the agenda.

Trends

Announcements: At the very start of Q4, Google signed a deal with Kairos Power to purchase 500 MW of power from six or seven next-gen reactors. Two days later Amazon Web Services announced a $500 million investment into X-energy and agreements that would bring four small modular reactors online in Washington state. Less than two months later, Meta said they were looking to bring online up to 4 GW of nuclear power. And soon thereafter, Oklo signed an agreement with data center operator Switch for 12 GW of nuclear power over the next two decades.

AI Energy Opportunity: All of these Q4 announcements from Big Tech seem to be an industry response to an ongoing question: How do we continue to power today’s advancements? Nuclear’s clean, round-the-clock attributes make it a particularly attractive investment for energy-intensive customers. Because the need for more AI infrastructure isn’t likely to go away, many expect the nuclear spotlight to continue. And it’s not just AI customers—the electrification of whole sectors like transportation means the investment case for nuclear is here to stay.

2024 Market Disrupter: This may be too meta for the section, but nuclear energy made the cut for a bunch of 2024 investment trend lists, including the Financial Times, VettaFi, and Business Insider—to name a few! For the reasons already mentioned in this update, we expect that trend (*wink*) to continue into 2025.