X-Energy (XE) heads to Nasdaq — and Oak Ridge is along for the ride
The advanced nuclear company behind the TRISO-X fuel facility under construction in East Tennessee priced its IPO above range on Friday, raising more than $1 billion.
X-energy, Inc., the advanced nuclear reactor and fuel company based in Maryland with deep ties to Oak Ridge, began trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market yesterday under the ticker symbol “XE.”
The company priced its initial public offering at $23 per share on April 24, above the originally expected range of $16 to $19, and upsized the offering to 44,254,659 shares. At that price, the raise would total just over $1 billion, with underwriters J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Jefferies, and Moelis & Company holding a 30-day option to purchase an additional 6,638,198 shares. The offering is expected to close on Monday, April 27.
X-energy’s subsidiary, TRISO-X, is actively building its TX-1 fuel fabrication facility at the Oak Ridge Horizon Center, and this public raise comes at a pivotal moment in that project’s timeline.
In February, TRISO-X secured what the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) described as the first fuel fabrication license of its kind in more than 50 years, clearing the regulatory path to commercially manufacture high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) fuel. TX-1 is on track to be the first Category II nuclear fuel facility licensed by the NRC in U.S. history.
The technology behind that facility has roots at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), where X-energy spent roughly a decade refining and scaling its proprietary TRISO fuel process starting in 2016.
The company has been building its balance sheet aggressively ahead of the public debut. In early 2025, X-energy closed a $700 million Series C-1 round, with proceeds directed toward completing reactor design and licensing as well as the first phase of the TRISO-X facility. The lead investors on the funding round were Segra Capital Management, Jane Street, Ares Management, Emerson Collective, and more. Some other notable investors, who came on during earlier rounds, were Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, Citadel Founder Ken Griffin, and the University of Michigan.
X-energy’s flagship product is its Xe-100 small modular reactor (SMR), which generates 80 megawatts of electricity per unit and can be scaled to 960 megawatts in multi-unit configurations. The reactors are designed to run on TRISO fuel, the same fuel slated for production in Oak Ridge.
Amazon has committed to bringing more than five gigawatts of new X-energy-powered projects online by 2039.
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