Meta is doing something most tech companies only talk about. It is signing real agreements that lock in nuclear power for years to come. The company says the electricity will help run its sprawling data centers and the AI models they plan to scale next.
The social network that turned into an AI powerhouse now needs more juice than wind and solar can reliably provide. So Meta is making nuclear part of its core energy plan.
The company announced deals with Vistra, TerraPower, and Oklo. This comes after an earlier agreement with Constellation. Put together, Meta says the commitments could support up to 6.6 gigawatts of clean power by 2035 for the grids that power its data centers. That includes its Prometheus supercluster in New Albany, Ohio.
A big part of this effort is about extending the working lives of plants that already exist. Meta is signing long-term contracts to keep three Vistra reactors operating in Ohio and Pennsylvania. It also plans to support power upgrades at those facilities. These uprates will increase output rather than building brand-new reactors from scratch, which gives Meta faster access to energy.
The company also wants to push next-generation nuclear. That is where Oklo and TerraPower come in. Both are building smaller advanced reactors that are designed to operate safely and steadily while taking less space and using less fuel. Meta’s money gives the companies financial certainty long before any reactors are approved or built.
TerraPower, started by Bill Gates, plans Natrium reactors capable of combining nuclear output with on-site energy storage. Meta’s agreement includes two units coming as early as 2032, and could grow to eight total reactors by 2035. That is the largest single nuclear commitment Meta has made so far.
Oklo is working on a nuclear campus in Pike County, Ohio. The plan is to eventually produce roughly 1.2 gigawatts of steady baseload energy. The company says Meta’s involvement gives it the confidence to start procurement and development ahead of commercial operation.
Meta says these plans will create thousands of construction jobs, hundreds of long-term jobs, and keep tax revenue flowing in the regions where the facilities are located. It also highlights that its data centers pay for their own energy needs. Meta says this means local ratepayers are not subsidizing its electricity bill.
The company argues that nuclear gives it what intermittent renewables cannot. AI training and inference workloads need constant power. Blackouts or even minor disruptions can wipe out days of computation. Nuclear plants supply firm output twenty-four hours a day.
This commitment also helps build a domestic supply chain for uranium fuel and reactor components. Right now, the US still imports nuclear fuel from foreign suppliers. Meta says building more capacity at home is good for reliability and national security.
To Meta, the AI boom is not a hype cycle. It is a permanent shift in computing demand. New models will need more servers, and those servers will need a lot more electricity. Nuclear is the company’s answer to questions about where that power will come from.
Critics will point out nuclear development takes years and often slips behind schedule. Meta seems willing to ride out that timeline. It wants cheap and predictable power in the 2030s. The company is betting that is when today’s AI bets will pay off.
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