Okay, hey, everyone. Marc Bianchi here from the TD Cowen Energy Research Team. Happy to be joined by Matt Barry from NANO Nuclear. Matt's Director of Capital Markets and IR, but also a TD Cowen Research Department alumni. So excited to see you out in the wild now.
Likewise.
So thanks, Matt, for taking the time here. I guess maybe to get us going here, you could kind of talk about the story of NANO, how it got started. I think people wonder what's the background of some companies here. Was there a person with a technology idea that incubated it up, or is it someone going out and looking for technologies and downselecting? Just maybe tell us about how NANO came to be and maybe how it's evolved over the past year or two.
Sure. Yeah, appreciate the intro, Marc. Absolutely, so our founder, Jay Jiang Yu, he founded the company in 2022, began assembling a world-class team, then I would say just from a high level, he was intrigued with the nuclear industry, the fact that you have these major macro trends, whether it's climate mandates globally or the need for clean, reliable, baseload energy, and especially the power requirements for data centers, and then obviously bipartisan support, which is tough to come by these days, so I think there was just a lot of major macro trends that our founder recognized early on, and he wanted to, he felt like with his capital markets background, he could create a company that could address these sort of the big challenges out there relating to these factors.
So he quickly assembled a world-class team, beginning with our CEO, James Walker, who's a nuclear physicist and engineer. He worked at Rolls-Royce. He worked at the U.K. Ministry of Defence. Also hired our CTO, Florin Heidet, who has 15 years of experience in the nuclear industry at Argonne National Lab and USNC, leading teams of 100 employees or more. And then obviously we also have several employees that have decades of experience either in the DOE or the NRC who have been integral to our strategy. So I would say that's where we started. NANO really began as looking at micro reactors that could, portable, could fit on the back of a truck. And so we IPO'd in May of 2024, obviously benefited from favorable market conditions.
I would say the thing that our team found very interesting from very early on is obviously we fully recognize the challenges of traditional nuclear reactors. It takes decades to get licensed, permitted, constructed, and tons of onsite construction, cost overruns. Every project is bespoke and different. So from a very high level, we thought taking the route of the micro reactors could really solve these major challenges, obviously to address the massive need for nuclear that we're now seeing in the future. So when we think about the micro reactors, what differentiates them from traditional nuclear and even some SMRs, it's the ability to mass produce a substantial portion of components, ability to factory fabricate, ship to site because these components and assemblies are below road weight limits. Then obviously once you get to site, modularly assemble them.
Ideally, the vision is to not have huge onsite construction costs so that you can ultimately reach economies of scale and co-locate at data center sites as well because there's less of a safety concern as you have with traditional nuclear and even some SMRs that are more scaled down versions of traditional nuclear reactors. I would say from a very high level, that was the vision. As we entered into 2025, there was an opportunity for us to acquire the Kronos MMR from USNC, which for those of you who aren't aware, Kronos had over $120 million invested into it over an eight-year period. This is not something that's just been around for a couple of years. There's been a lot of investment thought that went into the design, a lot of people working on it.
From our perspective, it's very de-risked and it's a high-temperature gas reactor. These types of reactors have been used in the U.S. and globally for many years, and so we know that they work just top of mind in the U.S., like Peach Bottom and I believe St. Vrain. These operated for, I think, well, over 10 years, so not only from the tech perspective, like having a design that's de-risked and high TRL, but then on top of that, it was already advancing in a licensing process, so it was the first micro reactor to enter Canada's phase one licensing process, and it's advancing in the U.S. NRC's licensing process with our prototype, our commercial prototype at the University of Illinois.
So obviously saying all of that, I know that was a lot, but what I'm trying to, the point I'm trying to make is it totally accelerated the trajectory of our company. And that was just not too long ago. And in addition, it has a very flexible design and it's a simple design that can serve not only data centers, but military sites, industrial sites, mining operations, remote communities. And the remote community aspect is extremely important when you look at Canada because they have many remote communities that are paying hundreds of dollars per megawatt hour for their energy and it's not clean energy. So the Canadian government obviously has a vested interest in Kronos's success and is very interested in the project. So yeah, I would say that's sort of the background on sort of where we are today and where we started.
Yeah. And so Kronos is clearly one of the main focus, but if people flip through your deck, they see a lot of other stuff going on with the company. You've, I think, streamlined that a little bit with you've got this letter of intent to divest Odin, but you'll still retain some sort of royalty or something like that with it. But maybe just if you had to distill it down, and we've talked about this before, what are the two or three things that investors should really focus on when thinking about the opportunity set for NANO?
Yeah. So just beginning with the portfolio design, it's a question. I'm sorry, with our portfolio, and it's a question we get from a lot of investors. And I would just say from a very high level, we were excited to simplify the portfolio, selling Odin, recouping our investment was important. And obviously we chose that path with Odin because it doesn't fit in the high-temperature gas reactor family. And so Zeus and Loki are scaled down versions of Kronos that are within that family and are going to benefit by proxy as Kronos advances through the licensing process. And they're also much smaller. They have different, like I said, capacities, but also serve different markets. So from a very high level, that strategically made a lot of sense.
And now, when we tried to be as clear as possible in our latest earnings call that Kronos is the focus of the company, a substantial majority of capital is focused on Kronos, and Zeus and Loki should benefit in a very capital-efficient way moving forward. So I think when you think about NANO, just like what are the key things that you should focus on? I think from our perspective, which really excites us, the various members of our team, is that I think we have the tech, the capital and the team to be successful. So just beginning with the tech, again, Kronos, 120 million of R&D over eight-year period. This is not a new design. It's tech that we know works. NRC is very familiar with high-temperature gas-cooled reactors and TRISO fuel.
I think a key advantage for us actually is that we could actually run on LEU Plus initially rather than HALU fuel, so if HALU isn't commercially available at scale, we have the benefit to begin on LEU Plus, which I think is a differentiator versus some peers, and so I think that's important, and again, when you think about Kronos, back at USNC, there actually was a hyperscaler that had a great deal of interest in Kronos and actually did close to six months' due diligence on Kronos. And we've mentioned this in our financial statements.
This is nothing we haven't spoken about before, but I would say what interests them on Kronos is obviously everything that we've talked about in terms of de-risk design and well advanced, but even more importantly, when you think about a very favorable footprint, because it doesn't have the same type of safety risks as traditional nuclear and light water reactors, and that ultimately results in not needing a massive exclusionary zone and actually being able to truly co-locate at a data center site and provide the option for off-grid or behind-the-meter power. And when we think about the challenges today with grid integration and costly transmission costs, these are very important benefits to a large-scale data center project.
In addition, when this hyperscaler looked at our sort of discussion around the economics of Kronos, when you get to these 500 megawatt type projects up to a gigawatt, and we believe that the economics could end up beating out SMRs and traditional nuclear, and even Kronos can scale cost-effectively over time, which some SMRs with much larger designs, depending on the size of the project, might not be able to have that type of benefit. Ultimately, we believe that Kronos could, once we reach economies of scale, we can have levelized cost of energy depending on the scale of the projects and how many projects we're serving. But once supply chains build out, like within the $50-$100 per megawatt hour sort of range in terms of LCOE. I would say from a very high level, the tech is there. We're excited about it.
And then we have the team, obviously, with our CEO, CTO. We're growing rapidly. Already have hired, I think, 20- 25 engineers looking to get up to 60, maybe even 100 over the next 12- 18 months. We have that new facility in Oak Brook, Illinois, that's strategically located near our University of Illinois project and in Canada. And we also have a bunch of NRC and DOE talent. And then lastly, it's just the capital. And we just had a private placement earlier this week. We have $600 million on the balance sheet. We have access to the capital markets. And so when we think about the ability to reach commercialization, we think we have everything that we need. And so obviously now the focus is just executing.
I crossed off a couple more of my questions with that. No, but I did want to ask about the capital. So I mean, maybe we can weave this into the University of Illinois Kronos project and sort of the next steps that are there. Maybe walk us through the timeline to getting this thing up to an operating level, what needs to happen from an investment perspective, from an actual erecting construction perspective, timelines there, and then how much is it going to cost?
Sure. Sure. So I would say right now the focus, we have a couple of key catalysts coming up, the first being site characterization and drilling at the site, which is occurring this month. We're excited to have an event around that. Hopefully we have some high-level government, federal and state-level people there, some supply chain partners. I think it's a great opportunity, and this will be webcasted, but it's a great opportunity for investors to actually get a look under the hood of NANO. See, there's a lot that we're working on that maybe they haven't had the opportunity to learn about yet, but we'll also have our management team there. So it'll be a great opportunity for them to provide a bit more detail on the project. So I would say that's number one. We get those results later this year.
The plan is for us to remain the same. It's to submit that construction permit application Q1 of 2026. Now, based on President Trump's most recent executive orders, it's a mandated 18-month period. That would sort of set us up to sometime in the first half of 2027 to get that construction permit, and then we can begin construction. That being said, and then we would then submit an operating license as quickly as possible once we receive that construction permit. That being said, next year we will start ordering long lead components. We'll be making probably some more announcements around a lot of our supply chain partners that we're working very hard to build out the supply chain.
Also potentially some early-stage non-nuclear-related construction activities, whatever we can get done at site that we're allowed to do before we get that construction permit application, we're definitely focused on doing. From there, first half of 2027, get that construction permit, then submit for the operating license. That really sets us up to sometime in 2029-2030 to be fully up and running at the university. Then because in Canada, we've submitted the same design to the CNSC that we have at the university and Canada's licensing group works very closely with the NRC. We expect that project to really move forward concurrently with the U.S. We'll have sort of both of those projects up and running. The goal is ideally would be nice to be 2029, but to be conservative around 2030.
The capital involved with getting to that point, what does that look like?
Yeah, so I would say right now we're still refining estimates. I would say at this point, we think around $350 million is a conservative estimate. It could be somewhere in that $300-$400 million range. We've said it could be hundreds of millions of dollars in our financial statements. So yeah, that's what we believe right now for each project. Ideally, I think we're confident that we could come into the lower end of the range, but obviously we want to put out estimates that we feel we're confident that we could beat and meet, and so when you think about the capital that we have now around $600 million in the balance sheet with the potential to raise, have a shelf that's under review for another $620 million, I think we're really well capitalized.
And I think it allows us to not be in a particular rush if market conditions aren't favorable to have to rush to raise more capital, which I think is a great position to be in. And so we could really from here on just focus on executing to these deadlines, getting these licenses and construction going as soon as possible, and then ultimately then look to commercialize at scale.
Is the ultimate goal to be owning power plants and having power purchase agreements with off-takers, or are you going to, what is the developer and off-taker operator sort of fit into the end game here? Would you ultimately just sell technology or how far downstream are you willing to go?
Yeah. No, it's an interesting question, Marc, and it's top of mind for investors. And I would say that it's interesting because we're having a huge focus for the company right now. From our perspective, as we see this huge valuation disconnect between us, I think right now currently around $2.4 billion market cap versus NuScale around $12 billion and then Oklo around $20 billion. And obviously they've announced some commercial agreements and have a backlog of gigawatts. And so when we think about ourselves, it's a huge focus for the company. We said it on our latest earnings call. We're focused on pursuing commercial agreements with data centers. And we're having these conversations. And it's really dependent on the customer because there's certain customer, you could think like some large-scale data center developers that are very well capitalized.
They have an operator in mind, and they're actually interested in licensing the tech. And from our perspective, that could be beneficial because it's less capital intensive for us. And so it's an interesting opportunity and interesting conversations. That being said, there's also other, I would say, a hyperscaler that we're talking to and other data centers that they just want the power. They don't want the liability. And in those instances, we would look to build and operate. Obviously, we're speaking to EPC partners that we could work with and help us out with this. So I think right now it's pretty flexible and it's customer dependent, but I would say we're extremely excited about a bunch of these opportunities.
Okay. Okay. Cool. Maybe in the last couple of minutes, let's talk about enrichment and the laser enrichment technology. I mean, I guess it's sort of an, your founder is involved with it, but I believe NANO has an investment in it, but it's not within the NANO umbrella. Just maybe explain how that structure works, and then we could talk about what the technology of success would mean for investors of NANO.
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's something that differentiates us from the pack. Our focus on vertical integration, our team from very early on had this strong belief that it's important not only to de-risk deployment of our micro reactors, but to have better economics of the micro reactors and provide leverage growth to the industry. So yeah, our relation, I would say our sort of collaboration with LIS Technologies, which as you mentioned, our founder, Jay, is also the founder of that company. NANO invested in its seed round and probably owns about 5% of it today. But I would say most importantly, before joining NANO, I came from the semiconductor industry. I was running IR at a semicap equipment provider. And so I'm well familiar with the industry. And there's a company, ASML.
They sell $300 million EUV lithography systems that are integral to the semi industry, scaling at the world's most advanced nodes. I bring this up because the technical team at LIS comes from ASML, so these guys have a deep understanding of lasers. They're also taking a very differentiated approach to laser-based enrichment, so from my perspective, if anyone is going to be successful in figuring out the way for laser-based enrichment to scale, which has been the challenge thus far with laser-based enrichment, it's going to be the LIS team, and they're part of the DOE's $3.4 billion LEU acquisition program, which I think speaks to the interest from the government in this tech and the importance of it.
So I would say LIS's success is. I would say, going to be, could certainly be a catalyst for NANO because we would have access to our own sort of partner with a differentiated enrichment solution that can disrupt the enrichment industry and obviously would help the economics de-risk micro reactor deployment. So I would say it's certainly a key differentiator and something we're very excited about. And I think in the coming year, hopefully we have, as we look into 2026, we have some more exciting developments with LIS as they prove out their tech. So that's something to keep an eye on for sure.
If there are additional capital raises coming from LIS, is it likely or should we be thinking that there's a good chance that NANO participates in that or?
I would say at this point in time, I don't think so. I don't think LIS, based on the, I think from the investor's perspective, they view investing in sort of enrichment as a way to play growth of the entire sector in the future. And so I don't think they're going to have a challenge if they need capital, getting capital. So yeah, I would say at this point, I don't think NANO would participate.
Okay. Great, Matt. Well, that's all the time we got. Covered a lot, so thank you.
Appreciate it, Mark, and look forward to speaking again soon.