Atomic Canyon Raises $7M led by Energy Impact Partners to bring AI-Powered Innovation to Nuclear Energy

Investment from the leading utility-backed investment fund will bring generative search and operational management capabilities to new markets

/EIN News/ -- SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif., May 28, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Atomic Canyon, the developer of the Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered search and generative AI tools for the nuclear power industry, today announced it has raised $7 million to accelerate deployments across the country. 

The seed round was led by the Elevate Future Fund from Energy Impact Partners (EIP), with participation from Commonweal Ventures, Plug and Play Ventures, Wischoff Ventures, Tower Research Ventures, and previous angel investors. As part of the investment, Jenny Gao, a Vice President of Energy Impact Partners, will join the Atomic Canyon board of directors.

Atomic Canyon's flagship product, Neutron Enterprise, addresses a challenge in the nuclear industry. By securely connecting to internal data sources at nuclear power plants and external authoritative technical and regulatory data sources, it provides AI-powered search and generative AI capabilities across vast repositories of technical documentation. 

The platform is being rolled out at PG&E’s Diablo Canyon Power Plant in Avila Beach, California, where it is transforming how staff access and use the plant's estimated two billion pages of documents. Initial work shows that Neutron Enterprise reduces document search time from hours to seconds, enabling more strategic use of expert resources while improving regulatory compliance and operational efficiency.

"Our Neutron Enterprise installation at Diablo Canyon demonstrates the transformative power of AI in nuclear operations," said Trey Lauderdale, CEO of Atomic Canyon. "Nuclear plants deal with enormous volumes of documentation required for regulatory compliance and safe operations. Where plant staff previously spent up to eight hours gathering documentation before starting critical work, our technology allows them to find the exact documents they need in seconds, dramatically increasing productivity while maintaining the highest standards of safety and compliance. For a typical nuclear facility, this translates to thousands of engineering hours redirected to higher-value activities monthly, enhancing overall operational excellence and allowing skilled professionals to focus on the most critical aspects of plant reliability."

Neutron Enterprise leverages FERMI, Atomic Canyon's family of AI models, which are specifically trained on nuclear terminology. These models were developed in partnership with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, using their Frontier supercomputer, the world's first to achieve exascale computing. The platform integrates with multiple data sources at nuclear facilities, including record management and work management systems, while maintaining strict role-based access controls to ensure data security.

"Energy Impact Partners is committed to investing in technologies that can help solve our global energy challenges, and nuclear power is an essential part of that solution," said Jenny Gao, Vice President at Energy Impact Partners. "Atomic Canyon's innovative use of AI represents an advancement in information access and analysis in the nuclear sector. As the global demand for nuclear energy grows, innovative technologies like Neutron Enterprise at Diablo Canyon create a compelling opportunity to enhance productivity, yield substantial cost savings and make nuclear power more competitive in our energy mix.”

The new funding will be used to expand Atomic Canyon's team, enhance the Neutron platform, and develop additional integrations with third-party data sources and AI tools for next-generation nuclear technologies. These partnerships will further strengthen Neutron's ability to help nuclear power professionals find and generate relevant information across internal and external sources.

"This investment presents an exciting opportunity to have AI solve the very energy challenges that AI is creating," added Lauderdale. "The computational demands of artificial intelligence are driving unprecedented electricity consumption, with estimates suggesting data centers could consume 20% of global electricity by 2030. By streamlining information access and knowledge management, we're making nuclear power more attractive and accessible as a reliable energy source capable of meeting this growing demand for true, clean, energy independence."

With the funding, Atomic Canyon also announced its board of advisors including: Juliann Edwards, the Chief Development Officer of The Nuclear Company and the chair of U.S. Women in Nuclear; Bud Albright, the former Chair and CEO of the United States Nuclear Industry Council; David Nelson, former CIO of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Jon Guidroz, SVP of the small modular reactor technology developer Aalo Atomics and former Senior Strategy Officer and Senior Director of Energy and Resources at Microsoft.

For more information about Atomic Canyon and the Neutron platform, visit www.atomic-canyon.com.

About Atomic Canyon:
Atomic Canyon is transforming the nuclear energy sector with AI-powered solutions that streamline operations, enhance efficiency, and support regulatory compliance. Neutron Enterprise, which leverages FERMI AI models that are specifically trained on nuclear terminology, is currently in use at PG&E’s Diablo Canyon Power Plant as the only dedicated AI platform for document search, retrieval, augmented generation, and knowledge management, establishing a new standard for precision, efficiency, and data management. These models were developed in collaboration with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, utilizing Frontier, the world's fastest supercomputer, along with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) ADAMS database.

About Energy Impact Partners

Energy Impact Partners LP (EIP) is a global energy technology investor with a proprietary model designed to drive innovation. EIP brings together entrepreneurs and some of the world’s most forward-thinking energy and industrial companies to advance innovation for a better energy future. Investing in venture, growth/private equity and credit, EIP seeks attractive risk-adjusted returns for its investors by leveraging its differentiated strategy and industrial ecosystem. With over 80 corporate partners and over $4.5 billion in assets under management, EIP invests globally with over 100 professionals based in its offices in New York, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Palm Beach, London, Cologne and Oslo. For more information on EIP, please visit www.energyimpactpartners.com

Press Contact: atomiccanyon@launchsquad.com