Kofi Asante Is the First Black Founder of a Nuclear Energy Company in the U.S., and He Has Raised $60M to Put Reactors on Barges

Kofi Asante did not come up through nuclear engineering. He came up through logistics.

That background is the point. Asante helped launch Uber Freight, worked on launch teams at Uber's Advanced Technology Group and the Powerloop spinout, and later worked at Elroy Air and on an electric boat initiative at the Port of Long Beach. In January 2026, he quit and started Bluecore Energy, a company building small modular nuclear reactors that float.

In July, Bluecore became the first small modular reactor company to establish its headquarters inside a major U.S. port, at the Port of Long Beach in California. Slauson & Co., which led the company's first round, puts the other first plainly: Asante is the first Black founder of a nuclear energy company in the United States.

A power plant that floats

Bluecore's idea takes a technology with a long track record at sea and makes it commercial and portable. Nuclear reactors have powered U.S. Navy vessels for about 70 years. Bluecore made that system smaller and put it on a barge.

"The Navy is doing this as we speak, for the last 70 years, and has never had an accident," Asante told TechCrunch. "We just made it smaller, so you can actually move things around in a way that doesn't take years, but days."

The company's first system is designed to produce about 10 megawatts of continuous electricity, enough for roughly 15,000 homes or to help power a major port, and to run for years between refueling. Reactors can be paired to scale. The target customers are ports, data centers, industrial facilities, and coastal and island communities that need reliable, carbon-free power without waiting years for a traditional plant to be built.

The team behind it mixes maritime nuclear experience with aerospace and automotive work: engineers and operators from SpaceX, Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman, Toyota, and Uber, alongside former U.S. Navy nuclear submarine officers.

$10M first, then $50M more

Bluecore emerged from stealth on July 21, 2026 with a $10 million oversubscribed pre-seed round led by Slauson & Co. The round included Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen, Kevin Hart's Hartbeat Ventures, Harlem Capital, Precursor Ventures, LMNT, Visible Hands VC, Karman Ventures, Capital Factory, Share VC, X&, and Markham Ventures, plus angel investors who are former leaders at Tesla, Uber, Amazon, and Google, according to the company release shared with AfroTech. The company intentionally included a significant number of Black-owned and Black-led venture firms.

Then the story got bigger. On September 8, 2026, less than two months after launch, Bluecore announced a $50 million oversubscribed seed round led by Silverton Partners, bringing total disclosed funding to about $60 million. Slauson & Co., Harlem Capital, and Chris Larsen returned, joined by new backers including Collab Capital, MaC Ventures, and Hartbeat Ventures. Asante told TechCrunch he had not planned to raise again this year. Investor calls kept coming after the pre-seed launch, and the round closed in about eight weeks.

The capital funds product development, regulatory work, hiring, and nuclear fuel purchases. Since launch, the company has secured its port terminal, taken delivery of barges, built a test reactor, and begun formal engagement with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the U.S. Coast Guard on certifying its floating plant, with a partnership involving the Department of Transportation's Maritime Administration.

Why this founder story matters

Asante has said access to clean energy shaped the mission. His time working with Port of Long Beach leadership on zero-emission infrastructure showed him how much power a busy port needs, and how directly clean air affects the communities around it.

"I believe that the best companies are built by people who can see the world differently," Asante said in the launch release. He has also described the ambition in bigger terms, telling AfroTech he wants to open the door for more of the community to build generation-defining companies.

The takeaway: a founder from freight and logistics looked at one of the hardest, most regulated industries in the world, saw a delivery problem, and built the company that delivers power by water. Six months after founding, he has the capital, the barges, a port headquarters, and regulators at the table.