Actinide becomes the first startup to enrich uranium, producing HALEU for next-gen nuclear reactors out of Dallas

Actinide

Actinide, a Dallas-based startup, claims to be the first private company in history to enrich uranium. Its target product is HALEU — high-assay low-enriched uranium — the fuel grade required by next-generation nuclear reactors, which currently has no domestic supply chain in the United States. What little exists is sourced from decommissioned military programs or, until recently, Russia.

The company's enrichment process is built on the Calutron, a machine originally developed for the Manhattan Project by Nobel laureates. The technology was subsequently decommissioned because of its poor energy efficiency, driven largely by its reliance on large magnets. Actinide's redesign centers on superconducting magnets, which consume no power, effectively reducing a core energy cost to zero — an unusual engineering circumstance where the dominant constraint doesn't just improve but disappears.

“We were indeed the first startup in history to enrich uranium... HALEU stands for high assay low enriched uranium. It's the next gen fuel for next gen reactors... we actually are kind of agnostic with the materials that we make. Generally, we refine atoms, and some of the first refined atoms that we made were for the medical industry. They go for about $30,000 per gram... we delivered that to Oklo Isotopes.”

First commercial deliveries

Actinide has already made commercial deliveries, though not yet of HALEU. Its first refined atoms were isotopes for the medical industry, sold to Oklo Isotopes at roughly $30,000 per gram. Those deliveries are ongoing. The HALEU announcements came as the company emerged from stealth, generating significant attention, and biz-dev conversations with potential reactor customers are underway.

Funding and origins

Co-founder Eric Olszewski self-funded the company's early stages, putting in over $1 million of his own money before the company raised a seed round. Olszewski, who came from finance and software, describes being recruited by co-founder Robert Mendelsohn, who framed isotope separation as the hardest unsolved problem in humanity. The pitch landed: if the stone age, bronze age, iron age, and silicon age each defined an era of human capability, the atomic age was promised and never delivered.

Scaling and regulatory path

The gap between a single enrichment demonstration and commercial HALEU supply is significant on both technical and regulatory fronts. HALEU sits just below weapons-grade enrichment, which requires operating within a category-two facility. The underlying separation technology is roughly 80 years old, but the know-how is not. Much of the relevant research is classified, meaning Actinide had to derive significant portions of its process independently. The company keeps sensitive operational details air-gapped and analog as a deliberate IP-protection measure.

The company is now pursuing partners and regulatory approvals to scale production in Dallas.