Around the time Jigar Shah became director of the loan programs office at the U.S. Department of Energy, his venture capitalist friends gave him an earful about the idea of investing in nuclear power startups. “Like, 20 of my best friends in 2021 told me, ‘Jigar, we will never, ever in a million years invest in nuclear power,’” said Shah, whose office doled out tens of billions of dollars in loans to clean energy projects, including nuclear.

Now, though, that sentiment has flipped completely. “Every one of the 20 has now invested in some nuclear company as a venture capitalist,” said Shah, who left the Department of Energy in January.

What’s changed? For the most part, artificial intelligence and the unquenchable thirst for electricity that it creates in data centers. In the years to come, big tech companies that run those data centers will urgently need around-the-clock sources of carbon-free energy like nuclear if they’re to have any hope of meeting their climate goals. As a result, they’ve started backing an array of efforts to build more nuclear capacity (see our related story), which has further boosted investor confidence in the category.