No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups
00:30:47 · Isaiah Taylor
[00:30:47] S1: Yeah. The pace is extraordinary. And, you know, of course, I'm proud of my team. Of course, I'm, I think Valor is the best nuclear company out there, but I would argue empirically, we have the the highest pace of any nuclear company in the world, and it's not close. And the reason for that is two things. One is we are obsessed with simplicity. We want our designs to be as simple as possible. We would rather have a simpler machine that's easier to build that we can build at higher scale than a machine that's more efficient, that's more performant. We have ruthlessly deleted complexity, deleted parts, deleted systems where they're not necessary. The other thing is we picked a super safe architecture, and and this is, I think, a point that it's hard to tell from the outside because every reactor looks the same from the outside, and and every CEO says that the reactor is safe. And and and to some extent, they all are, right, because they're highly regulated, and we make sure that they're safe. But there are levels to this. Right? And it goes back to the the previous conversation we had about odds versus consequence. A tracer fueled graphite moderated helium cooled reactor of the geometry that we've built it here is just about as safe as humanity knows how to build a nuclear reactor, and that actually allows us to move faster. Right? And that's going to allow us to scale as well. The lower that we can keep that consequence, the greater we're gonna be able to scale and the faster we're gonna be able to move. The last thing is just the way that we have shaped this team. I have built this team very, very carefully. I am deeply involved in every hiring decision, and we have filtered nuclear as an industry for people with extreme agency, people with extreme bias to action. And, actually, we we have a lot of people from outside nuclear. Right? A lot of the people here now have more nuclear experience than, you know, any other startup because they've actually turned a plant on. But when they walked in, they had never seen a nuclear reactor before. But what they had done is built hard things in the real world. Right? And so we try to find those people who built hard things. And then within nuclear, I particularly love to find people that started in nuclear because they loved it, and they realized it was really slow.
00:32:55 · Isaiah Taylor, Sarah Guo
And then they left, and they're like, screw this. I'm gonna go do something interesting. And then they, you know, built a ton of hardware somewhere else, and then I convinced them to come back. Because I know that they love it, and I'm like, if you come back here, you're gonna be able to actually build and actually execute, but in something that that I know you love. So, also lots of people from the traditional nuclear world, but but those people we filter very, very hard for, do you wanna do science? Do you wanna, like, write papers, or do you want to build reactors and turn them on? And, the entire Valor team is laser focused on that. [00:33:32] S2: How much of the premise of Valor is possible now comes from there are increasing demands for power, you know, in The United States largely driven by AI compute?
00:33:32 · Sarah Guo, Isaiah Taylor
[00:33:32] S2: How much of the premise of Valor is possible now comes from there are increasing demands for power, you know, in The United States largely driven by AI compute? [00:33:44] S1: Yeah. So I'm super grateful for, you know, all our partners in in the AI space. NVIDIA, of course, who got a big event that we're talking about today, and we'll talk about that more in a minute what we did here with NVIDIA. But I would like to point out that energy being a commodity, the demand is set by the price. Right? So if you can reduce the price, you increase the demand, and that will be true about energy forever. Right? From now until the end of time, we know that energy is is sort of the only scarce thing in the universe. Right? It's the only irreversible thing in the universe in terms of a resource. And so if you can figure out how to make energy cheaper, you will have demand. And and so I I view valor as having a fundamentally infinite market because if we can figure out how to make, you know, energy at 1¢, you induce your own demand. Right? We begin to imagine ways to do things better with cheaper energy. If you can make it a tenth of a cent, you've induced even more. And so, yes, it's awesome that we have these, you know, tailwinds of customers who are really hungry for power. I think it's also great just from a a public awareness perspective where suddenly everyone remembers that power is super important. Right? But I also know that fundamentally making energy cheaper is what induces demand for more energy, and that's really gonna be our strategy for the next century.
00:33:44 · Isaiah Taylor, Sarah Guo
[00:33:44] S1: Yeah. So I'm super grateful for, you know, all our partners in in the AI space. NVIDIA, of course, who got a big event that we're talking about today, and we'll talk about that more in a minute what we did here with NVIDIA. But I would like to point out that energy being a commodity, the demand is set by the price. Right? So if you can reduce the price, you increase the demand, and that will be true about energy forever. Right? From now until the end of time, we know that energy is is sort of the only scarce thing in the universe. Right? It's the only irreversible thing in the universe in terms of a resource. And so if you can figure out how to make energy cheaper, you will have demand. And and so I I view valor as having a fundamentally infinite market because if we can figure out how to make, you know, energy at 1¢, you induce your own demand. Right? We begin to imagine ways to do things better with cheaper energy. If you can make it a tenth of a cent, you've induced even more. And so, yes, it's awesome that we have these, you know, tailwinds of customers who are really hungry for power. I think it's also great just from a a public awareness perspective where suddenly everyone remembers that power is super important. Right? But I also know that fundamentally making energy cheaper is what induces demand for more energy, and that's really gonna be our strategy for the next century. [00:35:01] S2: Can you talk about what you are doing with NVIDIA?
00:35:01 · Sarah Guo, Isaiah Taylor
[00:35:01] S2: Can you talk about what you are doing with NVIDIA? [00:35:04] S1: Yes. So we did something pretty awesome today. We powered the first ever AI chip powered by a nuclear reactor. So we took an NVIDIA Blackwell, super grateful to them for providing the system to us, and we connected it directly to our nuclear reactor. And we actually hosted the nuclear website. So depending on when this podcast drops, you'll be able to see it. If you go to nuclearwebsite.com, that website is directly hosted on the nuclear reactor. It is entirely coming from that chip provided by [00:35:38] S2: I'm gonna consume some nuclear power. Nice. [00:35:39] S1: Actually, on the website, you go on it right now, we tell you exactly how many atoms of uranium were split in order to deliver that web page to you. We've we've always been asked if we're gonna sell merch, I've always said that we're not gonna sell any merch until we've actually split an atom. And so, actually, the nuclear website is the only place you can buy Valor merch. So you actually have to buy it hosted from the reactor. So we we take billing in the physical world very seriously. The other thing is if you're watching this podcast too late, you're not gonna be able to see it anymore because once the reactor turns off, the the website is directly hosted from there, so it won't be available anymore. So there's some exclusivity too as well. [00:36:15] S2: So got to tune in while it's live.
00:36:15 · Sarah Guo, Isaiah Taylor
[00:36:15] S2: So got to tune in while it's live. [00:36:16] S1: That's right. You have to tune in while the reactor's running. We'll keep it running for a few days as we continue our final testing, and we'll go through various tests over the next few months. [00:36:26] S2: When you go talk to the big buyers of compute and thus power today, they will say nobody can deliver at scale until like '31, '32. And until then, it's gonna be diesel gensets and maybe solar and batteries. And, you know, we gotta figure out how to make it until that period of time. What do you believe that they don't believe about the next five years? [00:36:54] S1: Yeah. I think that they've looked at all of these nuclear companies of the past. And, again, most of the nuclear industry is a modeling and simulation industry. That's really what it is. If you you know, companies are what they do. Right? And so I actually did not allow Valor Atomics to call ourselves a nuclear startup until we [00:37:11] S2: So you're a concrete pouring in graphite.