Bluecore Energy Raises $50M for Reactors on Barges

Bluecore Energy raised a $50 million seed round that closed Sept. 8, eight weeks after the company opened the process, adding to the $10 million pre-seed it raised when it left stealth in July.

The round was oversubscribed and led by Silverton Partners, according to TechCrunch, which did not report a valuation for either round. Founder and CEO Kofi Asante is building small modular reactors mounted on floating barges rather than fixed sites, aimed at ports and the data centers now clustering near them. Bluecore is headquartered at the Port of Long Beach, which it says makes it the first nuclear company based at a major U.S. port.

A 10-megawatt barge, and a team from SpaceX and Rivian

The first design is meant to generate about 10 megawatts of electricity continuously using light-water reactor technology, refueled only once every few years, according to ESG Today. Asante told TechCrunch the team includes engineers who previously worked at SpaceX, Rivian and Toyota. "The Navy is doing this as we speak, for the last 70 years, and never had an accident," Asante said, comparing the approach to the Navy's own reactor-powered vessels. "My philosophy is that access to clean energy and clean water should be a human right," he said of the company's broader goal.

Silverton's new capital was joined by pre-seed backers doubling down, including Slauson & Co., Harlem Capital and Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen, plus new money from Collab Capital, Kevin Hart's HartBeat Ventures, and individual angels who previously worked at Tesla, Uber, Amazon and Google, per TechCrunch's reporting.

What regulators have and haven't approved

Bluecore says it began formal engagement with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the U.S. Coast Guard in August, and is in a product design review with them as of September, according to ESG Today. Neither agency has approved the design, and the company has not given a target date for when a review might conclude or when a first barge could actually generate power. The company says the new funding covers engineering, testing, regulatory work, hiring and its first nuclear fuel purchases, but neither outlet reported how the $50 million is split across those categories.

Bluecore Energy funding	Amount	Closed
Pre-seed	$10 million	July 2026 (stealth exit)
Seed	$50 million	Sept. 8, 2026

1. Pre-seed (July 2026)10 $ million
2. Seed (Sept. 8, 2026)50 $ million

Source: TechCrunch, accessed Sept. 13, 2026

Bluecore's bet on power infrastructure near ports and data centers echoes another young energy startup that raised this quarter: Light's $46 million Series A, closed Sept. 1, is built to let other brands resell electricity and is expanding specifically to serve data center demand. Bluecore's capital intensity and pre-revenue regulatory runway also look like Stoke Space's $1 billion Series E, which priced the rocket maker at $10 billion before its first launch had flown.

What happens next is regulatory rather than financial: whether the NRC and Coast Guard design review clears Bluecore's barge design, and on what timeline, will matter more to the company's future than the size of a seed round most nuclear developers would consider small.