Why Are Tech Companies Buying Up All The Nuclear Power Plants Around The World? - Jack Chapple

Apart from its beautiful cottage country environment, it’s a place that you could pass without a second thought. But something is happening here now, something that represents a massive shift in the way energy, power, and corporate control are evolving in the 21st century.

Amazon, a company you might associate more with next-day deliveries or endless movie recommendations, is making moves in a very different sector: nuclear energy. In a quiet but monumental deal, Amazon has bought up a nuclear reactor here in North Anna. It’s a head-turning development, yet it’s not entirely surprising.

Because Lake Anna is not alone.

In recent years, tech companies have begun buying nuclear reactors across the world. Just days ago, google announced it was buying and setting up nuclear reactors in California. Meanwhile, Microsoft followed suit with a reactor project on Three Mile Island, a site that notoriously shut down after a partial nuclear meltdown. And let’s not forget about Larry Ellisons’ Oracle. Larry Ellison a few weeks ago said this on a strange earnings call.



It’s not just the odd deal here or there. These purchases are part of a growing trend — tech giants are acquiring nuclear reactors as though they were grabbing prime real estate in Manhattan.

Why is this happening?

To understand, we have to rewind a bit. The tech industry today isn’t just about the gadgets in our pockets or the apps we use to navigate the world. It’s built on immense, unseen networks of data centers, high-performance computing clusters, and increasingly, artificial intelligence. And all these systems, in turn, rely on one thing: energy.