May 28, 2026 — Newcleo Ltd., the advanced nuclear developer building reactors that run on recycled atomic waste, said in a company statement Wednesday that it has agreed to merge with NewHold Investment Corp III, a publicly traded shell company, in a deal that values the startup at roughly $2.4 billion before new money comes in. The combined business plans to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker NWCL, with the deal expected to close in the second half of 2026.
The agreement gives Newcleo a fast route onto the U.S. stock market. Rather than running a traditional initial public offering, the company is merging into a blank-check firm that already trades publicly. The shell company, NewHold Investment Corp III, exists only to find a private business to take public. Once the two combine, Newcleo’s shares start trading without the long road of a standard listing.
The transaction is set to raise as much as $429 million in cash for the company. About $220 million comes from a private placement of stock sold to large investors and several current shareholders at $10 a share, with 22 million shares to be issued. Another $209 million sits in NewHold’s trust account, though that figure could shrink if some of the shell company’s investors ask for their money back before the deal closes, a common feature of these mergers.
Newcleo was started in 2021 by physicist Stefano Buono, who runs the company as chief executive. Before Newcleo, Buono founded Advanced Accelerator Applications, a medical isotope firm that listed on the Nasdaq and was bought by drugmaker Novartis in 2018 for $3.9 billion. The Paris-based company now operates in seven countries and employs more than 900 people. It has raised about $780 million in private funding since it began.
The business is still years away from selling power. Newcleo designs small, lead-cooled reactors that burn mixed-oxide fuel, known as MOX, which is made from reprocessed nuclear waste rather than freshly mined uranium. The pitch is that the technology can generate carbon-free electricity while shrinking the stockpile of radioactive material left over from older plants. The company holds patents across 31 families covering both the reactor design and the fuel process. It reported about $80 million in revenue and other income in 2024, almost all of it from supplying equipment to the nuclear industry rather than from running reactors.
The listing lands in the middle of a rush of nuclear companies onto public markets, driven by the enormous electricity demand from artificial-intelligence data centers. Oklo, a U.S. reactor developer Newcleo partnered with in October 2025, went public through its own blank-check merger in 2024. NuScale Power took the same path in 2022. Investors have warmed to the sector on the bet that AI’s appetite for round-the-clock power will need new sources of generation that wind and solar alone cannot supply.
Still, the structure carries real risk for buyers. Companies that go public this way have a spotty record, with many sliding sharply after their debuts. Newcleo’s $80 million in 2024 income is small against a $2.4 billion price tag, and no lead-cooled fast reactor has yet run at commercial scale anywhere. The company must clear regulators in both Europe and the United States, and any holdup could drain its cash before its first reactor produces a watt.
The deal points to how quickly money is moving into next-generation nuclear. A company that did not exist five years ago, and that has yet to power a single home, is now preparing to ask public investors for hundreds of millions of dollars on the promise of what its reactors might one day do.
JBizNews Desk
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