Blue Energy and GE Vernova this week formalized a strategic collaboration to build a 2.5 GW gas-plus-nuclear hybrid at the Port of Victoria, Texas, with Crusoe Energy already lined up as the anchor customer for a co-located AI data center campus. The plan pairs approximately 1 GW from two GE Vernova 7HA.02 gas turbines with up to 1.5 GW from as many as five GE Vernova Hitachi BWRX-300 small modular reactors, phased in on separate schedules.
The timeline splits the project into a bankable near-term leg and a licensed nuclear long-term leg. Early site work is expected later in 2026, with a final investment decision in 2027 and an NRC construction permit application the same year. Gas-fired power is targeted for as early as 2030. The BWRX-300 units come online as early as 2032, at which point the steam supply switches from gas to nuclear and the plant ramps to its full nuclear-plus-gas rating.
The financing structure is the point of the announcement. Blue Energy intends to own and operate the plant under long-term PPAs with industrial offtakers, treating the combined-cycle phase as the piece that supports leveraged debt while the SMR fleet completes licensing. As CEO Jake Jurewicz framed it, “somebody has to figure out where you can actually allocate risk,” and the gas leg is where lenders can. The company argues the model removes “at least five years” from the conventional nuclear timeline by not making the reactor the entry point for capital.
Two signals matter here. First, hyperscale AI offtake is now sitting behind SMR project finance in concrete form, not just MOUs. Crusoe and Blue Energy first tied the Victoria site to an AI data center campus in October 2025, and the GE Vernova collaboration is what turns that into a plant that can actually reach FID. Second, the “gas bridge” framing is a direct answer to the capital-cycle problem: a decade-plus construction timeline is not something greenfield equity underwrites at scale, so pairing SMRs with a bankable gas island is one of the few structures that gets nuclear built inside a hyperscaler procurement window.
Watch the FID milestone in 2027 and the NRC permit filing on the same clock. Slot reservation for the two 7HA.02 turbines is already in place for 2029 delivery, which anchors the gas side of the schedule and gives the nuclear side a concrete date to converge on.