Kilowatts or connections? Trump's favored nuclear start-ups soar to riches.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Kilowatts or connections? Trump’s favored nuclear start-ups soar to riches.

Founders of politically connected nuclear companies that have never built commercial reactors are becoming billionaires.

November 26, 2025 at 6:08 a.m. EST Yesterday at 6:08 a.m. EST
13 min


Toby Neugebauer, left, and Rick Perry ring the closing bell Oct. 1 during Fermi America's initial public offering at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York. (Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg/Getty Images)

By Evan Halper
https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/evan-halper/

The fledgling Texas company Fermi America has yet to produce an electron, split an atom or survive the torturous gantlet of regulatory and manufacturing obstacles required to build a nuclear reactor.

But investors are betting big that the Trump administration will help Fermi turn from a glossy, aspirational marketing brochure into a cutting-edge nuclear operation to meet the rapacious energy needs of AI data centers. So much so that they catapulted its founders into the ranks of the world’s richest men a few months after Fermi filed paperwork with regulators to build the “Donald J. Trump Advanced Energy and Intelligence Campus.”

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