Kairos Power has secured $643 million in combined private and government financing for its Hermes 2 demonstration reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, according to reporting published October 15, 2026 that cites Bloomberg and company chief executive Mike Laufer.
About $368 million of the total comes from private investors, including Google Ventures and DCVC. The article also references a $70 million commitment from Samsung C&T Corp. tied to a partnership announced in September, though it does not make clear whether that sum is counted within the private total. The remaining $275 million is federal financing from the U.S. Department of Energy.
Hermes 2 is designed as a 50-megawatt advanced reactor that uses molten salt rather than water as its coolant. Startup is expected in 2030. Under the arrangement described, the electricity would be sold to the Tennessee Valley Authority, which would supply it to Alphabet's Google data centers.
Part of the new capital is earmarked for expanding Kairos manufacturing operations in New Mexico, according to the report.
The financing places a Tennessee site among the more advanced efforts in the United States to move a next-generation reactor design toward commercial power generation, with a federal utility acting as the offtaker for a technology company's data center demand.
Source: Construction Review Online -- https://constructionreviewonline.com/hermes-2-reactor-kairos-power-secures-643m-for-tennessee-project/