Hard Kr Exclusive | Scholars from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and a fully established chief engineer team launch a nuclear fission startup, securing hundreds of millions in financing led by PhotoSynergy

The market's enthusiasm for nuclear energy continues to grow. According to Hard Kr, in recent days, Azure Fulcrum has successfully completed three rounds of financing, including the Angel round, Angel+ round, and Pre - A round. Multiple leading financial institutions and industrial capital have jointly supported the company, with a total financing amount of hundreds of millions of yuan. The funds will be mainly used for technology development, collaboration and integration with the traditional nuclear energy industry chain, and team building.

Founded in 2025 and headquartered in Shanghai, Azure Fulcrum is a high - tech company focusing on the commercialization of small modular nuclear reactors.

Its Angel round was led by Inno Angel Fund, with Tsinghua Alumni Seed Fund participating. The Angel+ round was led by Photosynthetic Venture Capital, with joint investment from Inno Angel Fund, Bairui Capital (founded by Li Ping, the co - founder and vice - chairman of CATL), and a leading financial institution. The Pre - A round was continuously led by Photosynthetic Venture Capital, with joint investment from a leading financial institution, CDH Investments, Northern Light Venture Capital, Vertex Ventures, Bairui Capital, and a leading internet strategic investor. Yuefeng Capital served as the exclusive financial advisor for both rounds of financing.

Hu Po, the founder of the company, graduated from the nuclear engineering major of Tsinghua University. He has been deeply involved in the field of nuclear engineering technology for more than 20 years and has participated in the technological research of the national major project "Guohe No.1", with extremely strong experience in the closed - loop of industry - academia - research. The company has recruited more than 10 full - time chief engineer - level teams, comprehensively covering key subsystems such as core design, nuclear island, fuel, mechanics, and instrumentation and control. It has the rare engineering experience of "from 0 to 1 and then to large - scale construction" of independent third - generation nuclear power technology.

Against the backdrop of the global power shortage caused by the explosion of the AI industry and the energy security needs triggered by geopolitical events, nuclear energy has recently received high attention from policies and the market. As of March 2026, 38 countries have signed the "2050 Tripling Nuclear Energy Declaration", and it is expected that the nuclear power installed capacity will exceed 1000 GW by 2050.

Among them, small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) have attracted the attention of the industry and the capital market in the past two years due to their advantages such as high safety, low cost, short construction period, and multiple applicable scenarios. Data shows that it is expected that more than 1,000 SMRs will be deployed globally in the future, with a total installed capacity of more than 200 GW. The core application scenarios include thermal power replacement, AI data centers, industrial heating, offshore oilfields, and mining areas.

Compared with nuclear fusion, whose commercialization still needs further observation, nuclear fission technology is relatively more mature. However, on the other hand, there are always safety risks. Hu Po did not avoid this issue. He told Hard Kr that safety risks can be systematically resolved through design and engineering technology, and small reactors have particular advantages. "According to the official review results obtained by international small - reactor companies, the emergency planning zone (EPZ) can be reduced to the factory boundary, which shows that overseas evaluations of the safety of small reactors are very high."

In terms of the technical route, Azure Fulcrum firmly chooses the water - cooled reactor (PWR) route, which has the highest technical maturity. Water - cooling technology has more than 70 years of operation experience globally and accounts for 70% of the active SMR designs in the world. It has a clear regulatory approval path and a mature supply chain system. More importantly, Azure Fulcrum's technical system reuses the engineering experience of large reactors, which enables the product to greatly shorten the verification cycle. The commercialization is expected to be achieved in the next three to five years, perfectly matching the stable energy demand brought by the expansion of AI computing power.

We talked with Hu Po about his plans and considerations:

Hard Kr: Although SMRs eliminate the risk of large - break leaks through integrated design, their core application scenarios are data centers and industrial parks, which are closer to the population and core industries. How to ensure safety?

Hu Po: The industry has a quantitative evaluation standard for the probability of major accidents in nuclear power plants, and we have done a lot of work. Currently, the safety of small reactors is 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than that of reactors that have had accidents and 10 to 100 times safer than third - generation large reactors.

There are several reasons for the improvement in safety. First, in the event of an accident, the key is to ensure the cooling of the reactor. As long as it can be cooled, the safety protection measures will not be damaged, and pollutants will not be released into the environment. The power of our designed product is only 1/10 of that of the current mainstream large - reactor products. The small power of the small reactor is like having only one tree on fire in the forest, which can be directly extinguished by spraying water or using a fire extinguisher. It is much easier to control than a whole forest on fire, and it is naturally safer in terms of accident handling.

Second, in the past, many accidents in large reactors were caused by external power outages, earthquakes, or tsunamis, which led to the failure of external monitoring and safety cooling equipment such as pumps. We use the heat generated by the reactor itself to achieve passive natural circulation to maintain the long - term safe cooling of the reactor, without the need for external equipment, which also improves safety performance.

Hard Kr: For nuclear fission, the technical implementation may be a matter of time. Ultimately, it depends on the grid - connected electricity price. How will Azure Fulcrum control costs?

Hu Po: We can talk about it from two dimensions. On the one hand, different from large reactors, small reactors can be modularly and batch - produced continuously as industrial products in the factory by reducing the single - piece scale. The cost will decrease as the batch production increases and the original technology is amortized. Traditional large reactors are large - scale engineering projects, which may take five to six years to build and require tens of thousands of workers. On - site construction and raw materials account for 50% of the costs. Small reactors significantly reduce and integrate equipment, and the on - site construction period will be greatly compressed to 2 - 3 years, leading to a sharp decline in on - site construction costs.

On the other hand, cost reduction through batch production requires time accumulation. To address the problem that the electricity price of the first and second reactors is high and no one is willing to pay more, our solution is the "direct supply model for users". In May this year, four domestic ministries and commissions jointly issued a document to discuss the optimization of power supply for computing power centers, specifically mentioning direct power supply from nuclear energy to computing power centers. If our small reactors directly supply power to industrial users or computing power centers, at least two types of fees are not required: First, there is no need to pay a fixed capacity fee; second, there is no need to pay a grid - passing fee. Without these two fees, our direct - supply electricity price will actually be cheaper than the electricity price that users get from the large grid.

Hard Kr: Many companies are also working on fourth - generation reactors. What are the advantages of our water - cooled small reactors?

Hu Po: Many people mistakenly think that a newer generation will be better in all aspects. In fact, water - cooled reactors still have irreplaceable advantages. First, in terms of engineering and industry chain maturity, water - cooled small reactors are better. Currently, among the 400 nuclear power plants in operation globally, about 93% are water - cooled reactors. Fourth - generation reactors are inferior to water - cooled reactors in terms of technical engineering maturity and supply chain, and it is difficult to achieve large - scale production and cost reduction in the short term.

Second, water - cooled reactors are long - term and stable power reactors under mature technology. Since 2022, our country has been continuously building 10 large water - cooled reactors every year. Considering the construction period and pre - planning, water - cooled reactors will coexist with us for 100 years. In the future for a certain period, water - cooled reactors are the best option with higher cost - effectiveness and the fastest commercialization.

I have personal experience of the greater reliability of water - cooled reactors in implementation. I used to work on the design of cutting - edge fourth - generation reactors at Shanghai Jiao Tong University for a long time, obtained a patent for invention, and won a startup award. However, after the actual startup preparation and market research, I found that due to the immaturity of cutting - edge fourth - generation reactors, it is not suitable for commercialization in the short term to build an experimental reactor with nuclear fuel. We hope to build a small reactor with the highest cost - effectiveness and capable of commercial power generation in the shortest time.