The Offtake Research Series · Volume I
Criticality Is Not a Customer
Edition 1.0 · Published October 19, 2026 · Data as of October 18, 2026
In the summer of 2026, privately developed reactors reached criticality one after another. None of their developers has a financeable customer. This report reads the public record of every advanced reactor and small modular reactor developer in the United States and Canada and asks one question of them: who has agreed to buy the power?
The short answer
Criticality was the milestone everyone photographed. The step that binds is a signed contract a lender will finance, and no hyperscaler has signed one for a new-build advanced reactor.
51 companies
24 active advanced reactor developers, 3 defunct or acquired, and 24 fuel cycle and ecosystem companies. October 2026 edition, revision 3.
Open the register →Claim by claim
Every chapter was checked against the sources its own notes name, by a reader who had not written it. About 250 findings resulted, and every one was corrected before publication.
Correction log →The Offtake
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Corrections are published, never applied silently.
Write to bijay@sonteno.com with the chapter, the claim and the source that contradicts it. Corrections are published with attribution unless you ask otherwise.
- Oct 19, 2026
Edition 1.0. Published after a claim-by-claim correction pass on every chapter; about 250 findings, all applied. The full list of changes is in the report's version history.
- Oct 19, 2026
Register, revision 3. Fermi America offering share counts corrected; classifications aligned with the report's correction pass. Every changed cell is listed on the register's Corrections tab.
How to cite
Mathew, Bijay Alex. Criticality Is Not a Customer. The Offtake Research Series, Volume I, Edition 1.0. SonTeno LLC, October 19, 2026. sonteno.com/research/criticality-is-not-a-customer