Big Tech Goes Nuclear

Three Mile Island was shut down in 2019 as an uneconomical relic. By 2024, Microsoft had a deal to restart it. Facing multi-year waits for grid connections and pressure to avoid carbon-heavy power, the hyperscalers went straight to nuclear operators and signed long-term agreements that looked more like utility contracts than tech deals. Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Meta each anchored gigawatts of capacity, in several cases funding plants that would not otherwise exist. None of them wanted to be in the power business.

For operators dependent on a critical input they don't control, this case sharpens a decision about leverage and timing. It asks what resource is becoming existential to your model while you remain a price-taker, and whether waiting for the market to solve it is simply too slow. The principle the hyperscalers are acting on, and the specific way they reshaped an entire supply landscape, is the lesson held back inside.