In short: Aalo Atomics and Crusoe announced a strategic partnership on July 30 to build what they are calling the world's first nuclear-powered "AI factory," pairing Aalo's advanced reactors with Crusoe's modular data center platform at Idaho National Laboratory (INL).
Under the deal, Aalo will power a Crusoe Spark modular data center running Crusoe Cloud at INL in 2027 as a proof of concept. Over the longer term, the companies plan to deploy Aalo Pods, 50-MWe "extra modular" reactor power plants, at Crusoe data centers by the end of 2029.
Who is bringing what
Aalo Atomics is an Austin-based advanced nuclear company running a staged reactor program at INL. Its Critical Test Reactor reached criticality on July 4, making it the fourth DOE-authorized advanced reactor to hit that milestone in roughly a month.
Next up is Aalo-X, a planned 30-MWth/10-MWe sodium-cooled demonstration plant, plus Project Ascension, a 10-MWe commercial-scale unit being built next to the test reactor to feed an on-site data center.
The commercial target is the Aalo Pod, a 50-MWe design built from five 10-MWe Aalo-1 reactors connected to a shared turbine. Aalo markets the Pod as delivering 100 MW on less than five acres with limited water requirements, compatible with conventional data center electrical equipment, and factory-built in modules to match data center growth increments.
Crusoe brings the compute side. Its Spark product is a turnkey, prefabricated modular data center manufactured at a 352,000-square-foot factory in Brighton, Colorado, with the first production modules expected in the third quarter of 2026. Spark units scale from hundreds of kilowatts to tens or hundreds of megawatts and can ship in as little as three months.
- Crusoe's contracted AI infrastructure capacity is approaching 5 GW across data centers and cloud.
- Its 2026 pipeline includes a 900-MW AI factory campus in Abilene, Texas, supporting Microsoft, a 1-GW campus in Childress, Texas, with Lancium, and a roughly 750-MW power agreement with Bergen Engines.
- The company has also locked in a 12-GWh iron-air battery deal with Form Energy and a 5-GW AI UPS agreement with ON.energy.
Why it matters
AI data center demand is colliding with grid constraints across the United States, and Big Tech has spent 2026 locking up natural gas and battery capacity while waiting for nuclear to mature. The Aalo-Crusoe project takes the opposite path: a nuclear-first pairing between an on-site reactor and a small modular data center, with no gas bridge in between.
"The next generation of AI infrastructure demands power that is reliable, abundant, clean and at scale, and Aalo's nuclear reactors are built to meet that need," said Cully Cavness, co-founder, president and chief strategy officer of Crusoe.
Aalo CEO Matt Loszak framed the demo as a test of the whole integrated system rather than the reactor alone. "It gives both teams the opportunity to optimize how the Aalo Pod, the energy management systems, including things like battery energy storage, power electronics, controls, and power conditioning systems, and the modular data center work together to deliver the reliability, responsiveness, and power quality that AI infrastructure requires," he said.
The INL project follows Crusoe's earlier nuclear-related partnership with Blue Energy at the Port of Victoria, Texas, but the structure is different. Blue Energy plans to run natural gas first and transition to SMRs later; the Aalo-Crusoe proving ground is nuclear-first from day one, testing startup and shutdown sequences, islanded operation, refueling scenarios, and how the reactor responds to shifting compute demand.
The timeline still carries real risk. Aalo's target of delivering future Pods within 12 months of order depends on successful Aalo-X operation, regulatory approvals, fuel supply, factory scale-up, and site-specific conditions. But if the 2027 demonstration delivers, it would mark the first time an AI data center runs on a small modular nuclear reactor, a milestone the entire industry has been chasing.
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