An American startup aiming to become the first privately funded company to enrich uranium in America. Based in Los Angeles, it is nicknamed the Manhattan Beach Project.
Founded by Scott Nolan, a partner at Founders Fund and former engineer at SpaceX. Lee Robinson, a founding member, worked in intelligence. Peter Thiel sits on the board; Founders Fund was the main investor in a $50m funding round in April 2025.
General Matter hopes to develop a technology to produce high-assay, low-enriched uranium (HALEU)—nuclear fuel enriched to between 5% and 20%—for the small modular reactors that some hope will one day power the artificial-intelligence revolution. It claims its technology will make HALEU in bigger quantities at lower cost than competitors.
The company was incorporated in 2024 but had caught the federal government's eye almost a year earlier. In early 2023 the Department of Energy named it as part of a 70-strong HALEU consortium. Late in 2024 it was one of four firms to win a spot to compete for a $2.7bn contract to supply HALEU to the government, and one of six in the running for an LEU contract worth up to $3.4bn. Its competitors for the HALEU contract include Urenco (a consortium of the British, Dutch and German governments), Orano (a mostly state-owned French firm) and Centrus Energy (a listed American firm that was once part of the government and in 2023 produced 20kg of HALEU, the first output in America in 70 years).
As of early 2025 General Matter had not yet formally sought a licence from America's Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a process that can take years.
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