Adam Draper leads Radiant Nuclear's $360M round after backing every round from pre-seed

on GitHub ship higher quality software faster. And you heard us tease it earlier, but we got some very special guests in the TVPN Ultra Dome. We got Adam Draper.

How you doing? And Doug Burnau. How you guys doing? Good to see you. Look at this outfit. Welcome back. What you got? A hat for fantastic once. Wait, I I saw a preview of this. I I saw the nuclear hat earlier on this show.

I also got you guys bright orange. Is this a safe meat stick hanging out of here?

This guy's got He's got problems.

You know, we're up here for a little while. Is Is the Is the orange because you're doing construction?

Well, you see is orange. I've been wearing orange pants for about 10 years.

For about 10 years. You got to Yeah, you got to have the vest for when you're doing video podcast cuz we didn't see your pants last time.

Well, I asked Twitter what I should wear today.

Yeah.

And so I was just walking around LA.

Yeah.

And they said the Dumb and Dumber suit.

There we go.

And so I uh went walking for costume shops and I ran into a great guy who tried to sell me everything in the store.

Fantastic.

And I ended up on this.

Can we open this? What? Can we open this? Yeah. I want I want you to open this.

You got to give him time to

I'm a collector of things. I just I I I felt uh inspired here. Open the whole thing.

Okay. Do you guys know Funko Pops?

I am familiar with Funko Pops. What did we get here? What is this?

Whoa. Whoa. It's a Look what it says.

Whoa. Custom.

Custom Funko Pops.

Crazy. Crazy.

You can just get these made. How does work,

dude? You know, I can't believe a gift far enough in advance.

There you go. This is amazing.

That's crazy. I feel like we got to protect those so nobody kind of messes with them.

Yeah, we should consult with Dylan Evercott on our team who knows collectibles very well because we might have to get this PSA certified. I think we should something like that.

Amazing. That's amazing. Thank you.

Uh Doug, good to see you again. Uh how how are things going? Uh

they're going really great.

I can imagine that demand for energy is in endless supply. Uh, what's the latest in your world, though?

Absolutely. Humans like being humans. They like lots of energy.

They do.

And you better get ready for the gong.

Okay. What you got for us?

Oh, we just we just raised $360 million.

Gong founder.

That's a big number.

We'll kick it off.

Congratulations on saying the biggest number.

360 million.

Just in case.

Fantastic.

You want another gone? Is that

I want you to hit the horse. Actually, that's on your side.

We got to hit the horse. We should make a horse gone.

Okay. So,

sounds a bit wrong. So, I I I mean I', you know, I've been to I've been to the radiant facility, nailundo. Does this unlock a new facility? Is there going to be a separate manufacturing line? Just a lot more humans working join the team. Like, what is the money for?

Yeah, it's uh mainly a scale of production at our factory facility in Tennessee, which we signed for in October.

Congrats. about 80 acre site right now and already broke ground. Okay. Digging on site and building's going up. It looks awesome. I saw art yesterday.

And so, so now you have when we were last talking, you were talking about still doing design work. You were working on the the what was this? The helium loop. I remember you explained some of this to me very nicely, dumbed it down. Uh but, uh, how far are you along in sort of locking the design? Because if you're setting up a manufacturing plant, I imagine that you're going to lose some flexibility at some point, right?

Yeah, absolutely. So, we're doing a dome uh a test in the dome very soon.

U and we actually since we talked last, we've gotten approval from the Department of Energy.

Cool.

Um it's a really boring sounding complex name, but it's it's the approval to fuel and go go to full

approval. Like that's more gongworthy. We should have the

There's a lot of people with money. There's only one government that can actually put down a stamp, you know.

Uh it it is it is incredible progress that doesn't get enough uh doesn't get enough credit. But anyway, so continue.

Yeah. So, uh it's called a preliminary design safety approval. It's done. So, this means the design is locked. So, that thing we were working on finishing out. That was the big event. And now it's been months of review back and forth and we're good. We're approved. The only ones.

So, so no big change. Oh, we're we're moving away from helium. We're moving away from

tric. Well, this is just I should say that's just for the first unit that goes in the dome and we've got more of a team now working on the production units that we're going to build lots of and build many at a time, right? Up to 50 per year from that factory site.

One a week.

So 50 that's 50 megawatts. Are you still thinking about the one megawatt architecture the diesel generator?

Yeah.

Okay. And then in terms of demand uh initially there was a lot of demand from uh you know stranded places where energy is very expensive to get to. you're off the grid, you're on an oil and gas site or you're in a military context. Has the has the demand shifted? Have the AI folks showed up?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Okay. Uh I mean, we have an announced deal with Equinex for 20 units with down payment on them. And uh you know what what'll end up happening is we're going to make many reactor products, right? Nuclear reactors can be products.

Y

uh that really has never happened before because usually you dig a big hole in the ground, you build a building, you're really you're making a building.

Y

um Right. And uh it's not a it's not a product. You have to for a to be a product, it has to be mass producible. And so that's really what Radiant is all about. But we're going to be making reactors for space. Yep.

Reactors for maybe the bottom of the ocean floor. Uh reactors that float reactors

reactors on a truck, reactors on a plane. Think about them as like they come out of a building.

At sound effect,

that's the horse.

Walk me some of the economies of scale. uh if I want in a in a in a long time whenever you're whenever you're it's ready if I want 10 megawws is it more efficient to get 10 one megawatt reactors or just scale up and create one 10 that maybe is bigger maybe has different you know manufacturing and uh and transportation requirements but uh when do you think about actually scaling up the design versus just selling more of the existing product?

Yeah. Uh so our mandate is really mass-produce. And so we don't want to make things that are not that are immobile.

Um and so if you operate a reactor that's at a larger power scale, it's going to be more efficient. There's actually a neat effect where like if you put a little bit more nuclear fuel in a design, that fuel makes the other fuel that you had go a little further.

So it's very cool and it's this like exponential scale.

Um but you know, we know what we're doing. We're totally focused around efficiency that we provide is more like deployability, right? If you go, I want power next week, we can actually do that. Yeah.

And if you go too big, you can't do it. You lose that. Yeah.

So that's what Kidos the product is about.

Got it. Makes sense.

Um but this round is really exciting. Uh we actually had uh you know Adam led the rounds and actually has invested in every round.

Every round we've ever done.

I used to be called the most invested investing. So he used to say I've invested the most. But now I get to say

is this your biggest check ever?

Yeah. So boost VC uh preede for uh ma magic and mutants and historic things and that's how we look at it.

Cool.

Uh we generally are investing $500,000.

Yeah.

Into all the deals.

Seems like a shift.

Um

but every once in a while you uh you know you encounter a company and a founder who you just enjoy and care about and you want to go all in. And so

we we in October after they had announced this uh the Nashville plot.

Yeah.

Uh my partner and I, Brighton, we got together and we were like,

can we do it?

And so we we we decided to just back up the truck. We went for it. And fortunately, he is incredible investors. Uh he's an incredible founder and we everyone just re everyone reuped. We got to lead it. It was fantastic.

Yeah. Now,

does that change the overall strategy of boost or is this sort of like a special case where you went to the LPs and said there's a specific a specific opportunity that we're targeting?

Yeah, for the So, great question.

Um, I do think that there are opportunities like this that emerge when you get to know your founders well. And so, I've invested in 600 companies over the course of 15 years.

Uh, here we go.

I'm I like that. Yes. Yes. And uh and you know, we we we do follow on, we do those things, but uh I just feel, hey,

if Doug does this, if the team at Radiant is capable of doing this, this makes a historic change in a world I want to live in.

Um and so I ended up getting to care about the the founder as well as the mission. And so by doing that, I get to So my my quick answer, you asked a very specific question.

Yeah. uh in the situation where that will continue to be true, it would be really fun to do more of these.

However, I wear orange pants.

Yes.

And I love the early stage.

Yeah. So, you should still Yeah. You're still very focused on the early stage. Like, we shouldn't just think, oh, Boost is just a ma major growth equity firm now.

Uh I I don't I don't think I could sell Yeah. I don't know. No, I just love the energy. I love being the gateway to be able to help people pursue their dream of whatever the thing is.

Um, and I've been able to see people of across the entire stack for over the last 15 years. And, you know, I I also now get to, you know, be in the room and watch watch nuclear reactors be built.

Yeah. Are there are are are are LPs and investors that you talk to sort of receptive to this idea that uh nuclear technology is like sort of getting pulled forward by the AI boom but sort of uncorrelated with it because like we still need energy for oil and gas exploration and the military and all these different things like it's not so hyperindexed on like make or break do we get to ASI or not like this technology is useful in all scenarios

because ASI the new a it's the goalost we have our goalpost over there

there's a great book called scythe that calls that the the thunderhead and

thunderhead

and so we can call it that now I'm going to call it thunderhead for the rest of

okay

uh so the I mean the general answer is I think across all markets energy only gets consumed more and that's like such an easy sell for the and

so it's it's pure execution risk at this point.

Yeah. And so we know the demand is there. Uh we know that there there's a huge nuclear wave where that the government is behind.

Um and so limit limited partners and other investors they want access. Now when when Doug pitched me seven years ago like none of those things the the energy was still a real problem.

Overnight success.

Yeah. I got a I got a hot hand right now.

Oh my god. Uh the none of those things like none of the other things were true. It was uh you know people thought it was a regulatory burden. People thought like the government would never allow you to do this. But

you know we have built nuclear reactors before. We have nuclear reactors. And so when he pitched me on a phone call in 20 minutes I said yes. And we wrote the largest check we had ever written at that point. also and then we this last October we wrote a way bigger one but

how much work do you think needs to be done on the on the public perception side because right now data centers are unpopular and I think the number one reason is not slop in your feed it's energy prices going up and if you build more energy if you build more clean energy it should be a win-win everyone should be happy but I just have this inkling that if if you go When you say we're building a data center, we're going to make it look good. It won't be visibly obstructed and we're building the power plant for it. It's a nuclear power plant. You're still going to get a few protesters. Maybe not as many, but they'll still be there. So, how do you think public what how do you think about positioning nuclear for consumers, for people that might have this in their neighborhood at some point or in their state or in their country even

or in their podcast studio

ideally. Ideally, sign me up. Uh you guys want but uh but and then and then how do you think about actually we actually did look at it we looked at a studio space we were about to put an offer down on it

and uh we were like what's in that door and they were like oh don't worry about it that's just the machine and we were like oh I'm actually very curious about it and I'm actually pretty worried about the machine that's just the machine

that in that case they were cleaning the soil from some industrial waste that

happened like 50 years prior.

Soil remediation,

soil remediation 100 years on. But anyway, uh communication about uh the risks of nuclear, the benefits of nuclear, what do you think are the important uh points to get across and then how do you think those diffuse through the populace? Yeah, it's really important first off to right to talk to the public and really explain how to think about nuclear and I I wrote a thing called Adams for Prosperity that lays out some of those points, but we will we are making it now into a cooler kind of series. We can't go through all of the individual points here.

Yeah.

Um but I think you're right about AI, right? I think that people don't like really a big building going up like a big monstrosity that's going to bring a bunch of attention and people and traffic and like all the the stuff that it brings.

Yeah. And you also have the added complexity of the energy markets typically being very regulated, right? There's a lot of laws around it and they can just get a higher rate. They have to pay,

right? If they get enough votes.

Yeah.

Right. And and so that's probably more more on the growth side of things. The good news is the thing that we're doing

is the opposite. You know, most people doing nuclear are targeting something big. Um you know, and and there's a lot of excitement around nuclear right now and AI. A lot of people are saying a saying. They're building a building.

Um, we're not doing that. We're doing the doing.

Sure.

So, uh, and what is that? It's just reactors that we build. They're on our site. It's a building far away that you never see as the customer and it just appears when you want it. It goes away when you want it to. You call us and go

pick it up.

Yeah.

It's kind of beautiful. It's like a totally different from other nuclear. So, I think that will help quite a lot because it's just such a different thing to be able to go,

you know, I can have clean power and you and we go, yeah. And they go, I can have it next week. Yes. Uh, and they go and it it can get send it away anytime. Yep. Anytime you want.

And no waste. Yeah. We take that and we handle that.

Talk about the ramp because we were looking at the data center that was recently protested in New Brunswick, New Jersey. It was tiny by AI comparisons. 25 megawws. Uh, you could probably supply it in half a year. But Meta's average campus right now is around 500 megawws. Take you 10 years to power that. What does the ramp up look like?

Your next jack.

Yeah. What does the ramp up to get from 50 a year to 500 look like for you?

Uh so I don't know. Right. It's uh it's not really something we're trying to address. Yeah.

What I'm most interested in is being able to put reactors in really crazy places. Yeah.

Like put a reactor on the bottom of the ocean floor like right like like I was saying.

Why would Why would you actually want one on the bottom of the ocean floor? Uh it's the same reason you would go like put a research facility in Antarctica, right? Cuz it's far away and it's weird there and you're going to learn some things and we haven't ever done it before. Interesting.

And so it's a frontier and that's kind of all that I'm excited about. Frontier put on sync some sort of uh you know remote lab that had camera equipment, lights and sensors and you could understand what's happening at the bottom of the ocean. That's fascinating.

I don't know what you'll learn.

James Cameron should become the spokesperson.

Anybody can Yeah. If you want we can make a reactor for that, right? And the thing is like if you want you can't use a combustion power source and there's definitely no sun.

So it's just think about that right

where the only thing you can do in a lot of places actually not just that one. It's just a a good example to get people to think like oh shoot okay bottom of the ocean floor

all the way up to anywhere in space as far from the earth as you want to be

as far from the sun as you want to be.

Oh true.

Think about that. That's weaker on Mars. Right.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Interesting.

Although you'd still use it. I like both. I like solar plus nuclear.

Yeah. I think you're on the right path though that education is one of the most expensive issues, right? And stories like having a nuclear reactor on the ocean floor that's functioning and we're learning

tell a great story. And so those stories become easier to tell as more of them exist.

Uh the hard part is the in between. We we saw this when we were in crypto also.

Uh everyone was saying like the banks will never let you do this, the governments will never let you do it. Now obviously like it's on the Congress floor. It's all the

ra so many big massive

Yeah. And so like transitions take time and they're expensive but like it's important because the end consumer gets a better product.

Yeah. In the early stage of I I would call like the hard tech boom, the defense tech boom, the Elsagundo boom, the dollars that were being raised

about 1980s.

Yeah. I'm talking more about like 2022 maybe when people started paying attention in Silicon Valley. Uh but the dollars were small and so they could be sort of flyer checks from VCs. Now we're getting into real numbers. Do you What do you think about the relationship with the SAS apocalypse? It feels like public markets investors are rotating away from software. They would love something like industrials energy, something that's clearly going to exist in a hundred years, no matter how good the computers get at at AI. Uh but then in Silicon Valley, we'll talk to founders all the time where they're raising for a software product. Basically, it's just AI indexed and so they're soaking up 200 million of capital every other day. Uh what's happening at the early stage in terms of uh excitement and at that growth stage to fund projects like this? Well, as we are growth investors.

Yes. Yes. Officially.

Probably not when you guys preed and series D.

No, I actually have a shirt. It says preede and series D.

You're thinking you're actually thinking on the longest time around.

I'm going to make a custom

crazy

uh gift. Uh

technology looks like magic.

Incredible.

My uh well, here I'm sure we both have thoughts on this. So, we've been investing in hard tech. Uh we have a way of when everyone really gets excited about something, we like looking the other way. And over COVID, we saw everyone getting really excited about software because we were all

locked in our houses and inside and like software was where you saw everything.

Anything for remote work is just booming.

And so we made a conscious decision to be like, hey, that's not always going to be true. Let's invest in uh in-person businesses that are that are like physically expensive, okay, that are high capex. And so we obviously uh invested in Radiant multiple times and a bunch of other Starfish, Venus, just an incredible number of fantastic companies.

Um and so like we were able to there there's a I think that there's a sense in the investment world where they want to be a part of something that's important,

but sometimes they're not considering whether or not it's a good investment. And I think that balance is at uh scale right now. That that would be my like and I think we're they're probably overestimating the SAS apocalypse. I think so many talented people are building so many incredible things.

Um I was just at the upfront summit which was just over here walkable.

So thank you. This was very efficient for me. Um, and you know who I love to hear speak is Kathy Wood uh from ARC because uh she's just so optimistic about unlocking technology assets to everyone and a lot of other people were sort of in the AI negativity bucket and I was like I

how can you not be optimistic? We just saw

you know everyone who's building awesome stuff on this show, right? Like incredible AI things. Yeah. Well, I don't know if you saw, but uh Square just did the largest layoff in S&P 500 history by on a percentage basis.

That's crazy.

And so that's that's that's kind of the the flip side. And and uh even even Howard

Hey, get get in touch with Boost VC.

Okay.

Uh and we we're going to invest in some Square alumni. I think that it's the

you got 4,000 of them back. Fantastic. So get the Brink trucks, right? There are talented people there. We would love to invest in them. And I think what AI is really causing is this eruption of amazing uh individual entrepreneurs. It's like the next wave. Yeah.

So, it's exciting.

Very interesting.

On that note, you know, of optimism, we there's a very cool video we released just yesterday that I thought you might want to see.

Yeah.

And I think you're I think you guys have so we can do it.

We can have a have a look see

and just shows shows what we're building. Right. So we talked about the approval the

the regulatory approval.

Yeah.

I remember seeing

the core plate. This is

I think you showed me like the raw material for this.

That's hard in the loop. That's doing orbital welds tubing.

That's this the mounts for the pressure vessel. That's the forged pressure vessel piece.

That's crazy.

And that's what we're doing.

Yeah. Amazing.

July 4th. I love it.

So cool.

How awesome LA is. It's just like huge physical things like we're we're back to building huge physical things.

So you'll bring that design to the dome.

That's right. All that is the actual nuclear reactor hardware that we're showing. And this is really like the most that we can possibly show to the public.

Uh and we now have two buildings. One is just all manufacturing. It's like you go in, it's all machine shops, these big fancy glove boxes where we're doing welding with controlled gas conditions. And it's it's so much different from the last

Yeah. Yeah. When I was at the when I was at the uh the the the office, um

were you sending out for like CNC parts? Were you?

Oh, yeah. A lot of stuff. We had to send out a ton of stuff.

I noticed a lot of equipment, but there wasn't that much actual machining material to like make stuff that you would put on. Interesting. So, that must have the machines in the actual building must speed up iteration as well, right?

Absolutely. a and a lot of the incoming capital allows us to make those moves and do those things and even invest a little bit in R&D for things that are really far out that aren't even a product yet that are just like

we realize the limitation and we're like we're going to go push on that thing and if it moves we'll have something no one else has.

Yeah. Uh last time I was there I think you had around 40 people. How big is the

Oh my god. 150.

Wow. Uh talk to me about that road. Uh I I I mean you were at SpaceX for a long time. Did you ever manage that many people? Is this a new challenge for you?

No. Uh I I I did a very weird job when I was at SpaceX. I was there 12 years. Uh and the first couple years I

success.

I I loved it. It's why I stayed 12 years, right? It was the coolest mission like make life multilanetary. I love that. And and I I left to make a reactor company to make power for that mission still like I I still want our reactors to go that route. Totally. uh of course a different type, but uh

I was doing stuff like uh you know I made the first Falcon 9 ground system and then I made the the first two rockets. I traveled around the country testing the first two Falcon 9 uh that flew

and then I did the first ever rocket with legs and that was like report directly to Elon with like three other people like go to his desk. Yeah. And go here's what we're doing. He would be like and we got so lucky that like every time we came to him we're pretty much like and the qual tank passed and it worked and the schedule's good and he so he loved it right. It was like great. Um but from there it was like then I was doing Boring Company and I was doing Hyperloop is every Elon like side project which is exciting around special projects so not really full scale up constantly but now it's higher higher higher

but I would just go and talk to whoever I needed and cross every line possible and there I didn't use the right channels of communication I just pulled all the assets and I'm building a thing I'm building a thing and I'm ignoring everything else and I that's basically still how I operate.

Yeah, that's great. Hidden candy shop.

Powerful.

Anyway, Jordy, anything else?

No guys, congratulations. Thank you so much for coming.

Thank you for coming here. And this is great. This is a great one.

Uh so excited. I I I genuinely cannot wait to get my own. So I don't know what I'm going to use it for yet, but it's going to power your

How many are you going to need in total?

How many minis can you talking about the ocean?

35 2035. I'm going to need some for a boat. I just love an electric nuclear boat.

I mean offrid for the preppers. for the rich preppers, the AI billionaires, they might want it.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and if you have some real estate on the moon, it's not very high value without power. We want to get some power for that. I like that.

Guys,

thank you so much.

Hang out. Hopefully, we can see you and