No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups
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.
00:37:11 · Sarah Guo, Isaiah Taylor
[00:37:11] S2: So you're a concrete pouring in graphite. [00:37:13] S1: We we are legitimately a nuclear company because we split atoms. Right? Mhmm. But, you know, I'm I'm serious. We didn't allow ourselves to call ourselves a nuclear startup until we'd split the first atom. Right? Because companies are what they do. Before that, we were a company that was planning to split an atom. Now we're a company that has done it, you know, 10 to the 20 or so atoms so far. That number will keep going up. But yeah. So I I think there's a a just a big gap in mindset between are you serious about scale? And I would also point out that exponential curves are very counterintuitive. Right? If you look at the predictions of how many satellites would be in orbit when when SpaceX started going, people were like, there's no way they're gonna hit the numbers that they're hitting today. And exponentials are just really, really hard for for humans to understand. So I would say, yeah, if you're looking at the nuclear space today, you don't expect people to have this problem solved in 2031. In fact, I would say even 2035, a lot of these companies are still not gonna get there because they have the wrong mindset. They're not focused on hardware iteration, hardware execution, building the simplest and safest reactor that allows them to scale, and Valor just demonstrated that we are.
00:38:22 · S0, Isaiah Taylor
[00:38:22] S0: We actually had to invent our own grade of concrete in order to do this. And the reason is we need a high enough density to block gamma rays. The concrete also needs to be very strong because these are self stacking blocks. And we also can't use rebar because if we use rebar, rebar becomes activated by neutrons. So you'll actually be producing nuclear waste. We took two two engineers on our team. One of them is a nuclear physics mechanical sorry. One of the mechanical engineer, of nuclear physics, and we had them tag team this. We said go invent a grade of concrete, which has the density to block gamma rays, which has the strength to actually be a concrete block that's self cast, that has no rebar, and that has the right atomic mix that it will not become nuclear waste when it becomes irradiated. And they literally flew all around the country collecting rock samples from all around The United States. We called it the rock hunt. It was about a three week period from plane to plane literally collecting bags of rocks, they would come back on a Friday night, and they'd set up the conference room with a bunch of buckets of acid and they would dissolve the rocks and then they would take the rocks through a spectroscopy analysis to figure out the exact DPM and then they go back out the next week and collect the next sample. [00:39:38] S1: By the way,