Ex-Google Solar Dealmakers Pivot to Nuclear With Arcvia

Israeli entrepreneurs Itamar Serussi and Yonatan Raskin left solar behind in 2025 to found Arcvia, a company that now holds options on more than 20,000 dunams (about 4,940 acres) of land in America's most power-hungry markets. Their bet: small modular nuclear reactors, not renewables, will meet the surge in U.S. electricity demand.

The pivot started during a 1.5-gigawatt solar supply deal with Google. Serussi was running U.S. operations for Israeli renewable energy firm Energix at the time.

"Suddenly, they started talking to us differently," Serussi recalls. "They told us, 'Listen, our electricity consumption is rising dramatically, and we're looking for solutions that aren't just green but can also provide electricity 24/7 with extremely high reliability.' That's when it hit me: The world is moving toward a completely different reality, and the only solution that meets those requirements is nuclear energy."

Why land, not reactors?

Arcvia doesn't build reactors or develop nuclear technology. "We're project developers, not technology experts," Raskin explains. "What we know how to do well is bring infrastructure projects across the finish line."

The company's model targets a gap in the SMR value chain. Reactor developers such as NuScale, Sam Altman-backed Oklo and Bill Gates' TerraPower need sites, but land acquisition defeats them. Preparing a site demands geological surveys, water rights for cooling, grid connection agreements and Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval — then community consent. The process takes years and carries real rejection risk.

Arcvia acquires sites, often abandoned industrial brownfields, and de-risks them: it secures real estate and water rights, advances NRC licensing, negotiates with planning authorities and infrastructure providers, and wins local support. The finished product is "powered land" — turnkey sites sold to utilities or independent power producers. By then, the land's value has risen by tens of percentage points or more.

How big is the nuclear land grab?

According to the Clean Energy Buyers Association, U.S. buyers signed agreements for more than 40 terawatt-hours of nuclear electricity in 2025 — more than solar and wind combined. Washington backs the trend with a bipartisan goal of quadrupling nuclear capacity from roughly 100 gigawatts today to 400 gigawatts by 2050.

Executive orders from the White House aim to shorten licensing, establish small reactor test sites at national laboratories such as Idaho's DOME facility, and pour billions into high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) supply chains to cut dependence on Russian fuel.

Tech giants have moved fast:

• Google signed with Kairos Power for a 500-megawatt fleet of small reactors.
• Amazon invested hundreds of millions in X-energy for gigawatt-scale projects.
• Meta signed agreements with Oklo and TerraPower.
• Microsoft committed to 20 years of purchases from Three Mile Island, site of one of America's worst nuclear accidents.

Arcvia's sites fit this demand. Single SMRs run 50 to 300 megawatts, but Serussi notes multiple units per site mean "complexes with capacities ranging from 600 megawatts to 1.2 gigawatts." The company buys extra land beyond the reactor footprint to allow co-located data centers or battery storage until the reactor is complete. Headcount sits at seven, with plans to reach 15 to 20 within a year.

Who is bankrolling Arcvia?

Founders' capital funded the start, followed by rounds at a valuation of tens of millions of dollars. Anchor investor Yossi Sagol — former Keter Plastic owner and early Econergy backer — put in several million dollars. Amir Lazar, former CEO of Bank Leumi's mortgage subsidiary, and Avi Khouri, former Keter Plastic CFO, joined him.

The deal tracks a wider institutional shift: Migdal Capital Markets has launched dedicated energy mutual funds, and Generation Capital keeps expanding through its PowerGen and BlueGen subsidiaries.

Why do communities welcome reactors but reject solar?

Serussi says U.S. public opinion has flipped. "Today in the United States there's actually tremendous public opposition to solar projects," he says. "By contrast, with SMRs, we're seeing a level of support and acceptance we've never experienced before."

One landowner insisted on a contract clause: "You can build an SMR here, but we won't allow you to install solar panels."

Raskin credits economics. A single SMR project should create about 250 permanent, well-paying jobs, and roughly 100 conventional reactors already operate across the U.S. "Their father or grandfather worked at a plant like that for 30 years and retired with a respectable pension," he says of Pennsylvania and Virginia residents. Planning committees also back reactors because new capacity eases household electricity prices driven up by data centers.

What stands between Arcvia and the nuclear decade?

No Western company has yet connected a fully commercial SMR to the grid, outside state-backed projects in China and Russia. GE Vernova and Hitachi lead: physical construction of a BWRX-300 reactor in Canada is underway, with grid connection expected around 2030. Most rivals remain in planning, licensing or earthworks stages.

"When we started talking about this in mid-2025, most people outside the industry thought we were a little crazy," Raskin says. "But today everyone understands there's simply no way to meet the enormous demand created by the artificial intelligence revolution without a massive expansion of nuclear energy."