I've had a few questions about this article along the lines of, "why is Valar not allowing public comment?" This Trib article is wildly misleading. They have made sure to maintain *technical truth* but are purposefully not showing the whole picture. We attended a city council meeting and shared some of our future plans as one of several agenda items. That council meeting was open to public viewing but did not have public Q&A. Nothing to with us; that's just the format for these meetings. We did this ahead of filing for an actual CUP just to give people an idea of what we would be filing for. The actual CUP will have public Q&A as part of the city council's process. We are happy to answer questions. In fact, a couple weeks before, we had held our own town hall and answered questions for a few hours! We also answered questions in the lobby for a couple hours after the city counsel meeting as well, but we don't control the procedures for the main meeting. The trib knows this of course (we submitted corrections to them). But notice how in the screenshot they have the word "official", carefully threading the line of truth, without mentioning that we advertised our own unofficial townhall several weeks before this which was attended by hundreds of people! We loved answering the community's questions and have received so many amazing messages from people that are excited to see their community thrive with new industry. Spending time with the people of Utah as we build the future of energy there is one the very best parts of my job. The people of Carbon County and Emery County are cut from the toughest cloth. Through the coal mines and plants in that area, they've have been powering the mountain west for decades. We're proud to be part of continuing that legacy for more decades to come!

The 2026 American Dynamism 50 is here: our annual list of 50 companies, from within the a16z portfolio and beyond, building for America's future. This year's theme is Production is Deterrence. "America's ability to prevent conflict depends on what it can build, how fast it can deliver, and how long it can keep going." A new generation of defense companies is moving from prototypes to full-scale production, and the industrial base has to keep pace. This year's list is organized around three pillars: 1. Systems: the drones, ships, missiles, aircraft, and spacecraft that deter conflict. 2. Factories: the plants, tools, and software that build them. 3. Inputs: the materials and power they're made of and run on. Get all three right, and the impact reaches well beyond defense, to skilled jobs, revitalized communities, and the supply chains behind energy, housing, and everyday goods. Meet all 50:

Blue Ocean Materials founder @lucasme_12 explains why El Segundo feels like Silicon Valley in the ’80s: "You’re seeing these founders tackling these very hard problems where we have no playbook. El Segundo feels like what I imagine was Silicon Valley in the ’80s." "There’s no career path. Who do you mimic? How do you create a Valar Atomics? How do you make it rain like Rainmaker? It’s just a bunch of mavericks trying to solve these problems." @BOMaterials

Excited to welcome Brian Cummings to Valar Atomics as VP of Nuclear Operations! Brian has spent 20+ years both regulating and running nuclear facilities across the Navy, NRC, DOE, and new advanced nuclear companies. At INL, Brian ran the nuclear safety oversight program and led nuclear operations for the TREAT reactor facility. At Kairos, he helped to develop the Hermes PSAR and led the execution of their TRISO plant. Brian has chosen to take the next step in advanced nuclear and join us on our mission to make energy cheaper and more abundant in the universe than ever before. Grateful to have him on the team!

Ok two year update to this .03 moons was probably not a bad estimate at the time And Claude and I have made this into a legit dashboard. Check it out: I still think that as a civilization we should aspire to a TOI of 10 moons

Imagine growing up seeing the demopublican government uniparty be utterly incompetent for your entire life, unable to build new energy, exporting factories, failing over and over at its ambitions in space, becoming bigger and more bloated and slower year after year until it threatens to eat the entirety of the U.S. economy, with the same geriatric 90 year olds piddling away the future year after year Then suddenly you have an administration which accepts a flood of young people in government at every level, from the lowest bureaucrats to the halls of the White House There is fierce debate and plenty of conflict, but there are also motions in policy which we've only dreamed of for decades. Five nuclear reactors turn on under the DOE after decades of stagnation. America returns to orbit the moon Imagine seeing that and the reaction of a sitting senator is “haha yeah let’s put those fuckin kids in jail to make an example!!”

When I think of the hundreds of people, young and old, who have put their lives on hold—sacrificing good jobs, foregoing hundreds of hours with their young families—in order to serve their country, and then I watch this from a sitting Senator… absolutely sickening

We are serious about making energy cheaper If you make a list of teams that have a real, honest shot at making energy 10x cheaper, Valar belongs in the top 5 from a third-party perspective. First startup to split an atom, make power, etc Dig deeper and you’ll find that it’s #1#

Excited to welcome Eric Lloyd to Valar Atomics! Eric helped build Overwatch (great game, but it stole players from CSGO… we’ll have words about that) and has spent the last 7 years at SpaceX operationalizing the hardest parts of the business with software: the Starlink customer platform (from zero to millions of customers), the platform that engineering runs on, and the operational range software that turned Falcon launches from irregular heroics to just another Thursday. Eric’s a legend and I’m grateful that he’s chosen to join our mission to make energy cheaper and more abundant in the universe than ever before.

Today, I'm excited to welcome Andy Lambert to Valar Atomics as Chief Production Officer. Andy has led an extraordinary career in manufacturing. As VP of Production at SpaceX, Andy took Falcon 9 from a fledgling single-use rocket to the world's most reliable launch vehicle and first orbital-class self-landing system, while also industrializing Falcon Heavy production and leading quality for America's primary human-rated spacecraft, Crew Dragon. Those who know me best know my particular style of hiring executives; that is, not hiring them until I've found the best in the world. It has taken me three years to find somebody that I feel is capable of executing on our mission to turn nuclear energy from a construction industry to one based on vertically integrated mass-manufacturing and rapid deployment. If you prick Valar Atomics in any place, you will find that we bleed scale. Every decision in our architecture has been meticulously and ruthlessly honed for building not tens of reactors, but thousands. Nuclear reactors are simple machines, but real scaled production is very hard. I wanted to find somebody who has lived through production hell of a novel system where the safety of human life hangs in the balance. Andy started his career working on the Harrier for the Royal Air Force, then moved into production at BMW. At SpaceX, Andy was responsible for the production of Falcon 9 and the quality of Crew Dragon, two of humanity's most challenging and safety-sensitive products. After SpaceX, Andy built complex and novel energy systems at Heliogen, then ran production at the innovative and vertically integrated hypercar company Czinger. This mix of novel environments, unprecedented pace, deep vertical integration, and life-safety quality is exactly what Valar Atomics needs to bring humanity into the atomic age and make energy cheaper than ever before. But more than all of that, I found Andy and his wife Carrie to be incredibly kind and genuine people who are incapable of resting on their laurels. They are hungry to help build the future. My reference checks on Andy were all consistent: he fights hard to win, but he does so in a way that brings everyone along. If you've worked with Andy in the past, or have worked in organizations that have been fortunate enough to have him at the helm, this is your chance to see him in peak form. The mission of Valar Atomics is to make energy cheaper and more abundant in the universe than ever before. We are doing this by becoming the first company in history to build thousands of nuclear fission reactors. This will require the absolute best people in the United States working harder than they've ever worked before. But our mission is worth your efforts. Join us!

Good morning. I have conducted a brief poll at Valar Atomics and the consensus is that we have decided to make energy cheaper and more abundant in the universe than ever before. Follow up polls showed that we ride to victory together. Condolences to the opposition.

Thomas, respectfully, you’re way out of line here. 1. Valar has universal share transfer restrictions. All share transfers, primary or secondary, common or preferred, are approved by the board. I’m not sure what random thing you were offered but it was absolutely not a secondary sale. As private companies grow people set up fake SPVs to try and bait create a market. We have never accepted any of these and have sent letters from our lawyers to shut them down. I’m not sure what happens to the money that people wire to these things, I hope it ends up getting returned, but it doesn’t go to us. 2. The reason I’m not taking you up on your wager is that I quite literally cannot afford it. I do not have $100k to spare literally. The small secondary I took in order to pay off some personal debt and help my parents out is basically depleted. I have been offered secondaries anywhere from $10m to $20m and have refused them. If Valar failed today I would have enough money to take a couple months to find a job and that’s it. I like it that way. This is really disappointing behavior from a competitor, man. I have been very careful not to criticize you and Jake publicly. How do you hope to benefit from this?

Thomas, respectfully, you’re way out of line here. 1. Valar has universal share transfer restrictions. All share transfers, primary or secondary, common or preferred, are approved by the board. I’m not sure what random thing you were offered but it was absolutely not a secondary sale. As private companies grow people set up fake SPVs to try and bait create a market. We have never accepted any of these and have sent letters from our lawyers to shut them down. I’m not sure what happens to the money that people wire to these things, I hope it ends up getting returned, but it doesn’t go to us. 2. The reason I’m not taking you up on your wager is that I quite literally cannot afford it. I do not have $100k to spare literally. The small secondary I took in order to pay off some personal debt and help my parents out is basically depleted. I have been offered secondaries anywhere from $10m to $20m and have refused them. If Valar failed today I would have enough money to take a couple months to find a job and that’s it. I like it that way. This is really disappointing behavior from a competitor, man. I have been very careful not to criticize you and Jake publicly. How do you hope to benefit from this?

Oklo was founded when I was 14. I watched their journey throughout high school and badly wanted them to succeed. I still do. If someone can crack economical fast spectrum reactors that’s amazingly good for mankind. I also think that medical isotopes are exceedingly important work. Valar Atomics has taken a different approach, but I harbor no ill will toward them. I’m not sure why Thomas decided to wake up and claim that I’ve sold hundreds of millions of dollars of secondary. It is not true at all. I did sell a small amount of stock earlier this year. Enough to pay off some old debts that were eating me from prior attempted companies. Also enough to pay off my parents’ credit card debt. There is not much of that left. If Valar failed today I’d be looking for a job. Never say never but I’d like to keep it that way until Valar is >$1T. We’ll see.

One of the more surprising and uncomfortable things about becoming a CEO is the fact that people will just openly lie about you, and there is not much you can really do about it C’est la vie, we build a thousand reactors anyway