Amazon Extends Nuclear Deal With Talen To Power AI, Deploys 750,000+ Robots

The ever-increasing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) has raised numerous concerns about the growing power consumption of data centers that enable the technology and its brilliant capabilities.

As a result, top AI companies—such as Meta, Microsoft, Google, and even the United States government—have turned to renewable energy deals to power their data centers.

In this list sits Amazon, which isn’t slowing down its efforts to use clean, renewable energy, with a wide range of previous deals in place. In October 2024, the company revealed three partnerships in this regard, tying up with Energy Northwest and X-energy in Washington and Dominion Energy in Virginia. This adds to deals with Iberdrola, Orbital Materials, and more.

Now, Amazon has entered into a long-term power purchase agreement with Talen Energy, an independent power producer and energy infrastructure company.
 

Amazon Partners With Talen

Through the deal, Talen will provide carbon-free energy from its Susquehanna nuclear power plant to Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers in the region.

The move is an expansion to its existing nuclear energy relationship with Amazon. It will see an investment of $20 billion, marking the largest private sector investment in state history, and will help create over 1,250 jobs.

The PPA (power purchase agreement) will see Talen provide Amazon with 1,920 megawatts of carbon-free nuclear power through 2042, with the option to extend the deal. The plan is to reach full volume of power delivery by 2032, with the potential to accelerate. The idea is to support Amazon’s AI and cloud technologies at its data center campus in Susquehanna and other sites throughout Pennsylvania.


“Our agreement with Amazon is designed to provide us with a long-term, steady source of revenue and greater balance sheet flexibility through contracted revenues. We remain a first mover in this space and intend to continue to execute on our data center strategy,” said Mac McFarland, Talen President and CEO. “Talen is well-positioned to support Amazon’s energy needs as it invests further in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”

“Amazon is proud to help Pennsylvania advance AI innovation through investments in the Commonwealth’s economic and energy future,” said Kevin Miller, AWS VP of Global Data Centers. “That’s why we’re making the largest private sector investment in state history—$20 billion—to bring 1,250 high-skilled jobs and economic benefits to the state, while also collaborating with Talen Energy to help power our infrastructure with carbon-free energy.”

Additionally, the two companies will explore building new Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) within Talen’s Pennsylvania footprint, as well as look to expand the nuclear plant’s energy output, including adding net-new energy to the PJM (Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland) grid.

Post the announcement, Talen’s shares rose nearly 8% in premarket trading.


When it comes to advanced AI technology, Amazon is a front-runner in the industry.

Not only is it used in flagship digital services that the company offers—Alexa—but also for enterprises, hardware, models, chatbots, and more.

The company already possesses various platforms and services to support AI development, especially through AWS (Amazon Web Services), including Amazon Bedrock for generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), Amazon SageMaker for machine learning (ML), and others.

Amazon is also using AI technology to boost its original business—deliveries!
 

Amazon’s AI For Faster Deliveries

Amazon unveiled three AI innovations that benefit customers, employees, and delivery partners.

These include:
 

• Wellspring: This GenAI mapping technology harnesses data from dozens of sources—including satellite imagery, road networks, building footprints, customer instructions, information from prior deliveries, and street imagery—to help drivers better navigate complex and diverse environments—including multi-building apartment complexes, parking spots, entrance points, shared mailrooms, and more—allowing quicker deliveries.

• An AI-Powered Demand Forecasting Model: This new foundational AI forecasting model helps Amazon “predict what customers will want, where they’ll want it, and when—for hundreds of millions of products per day”—by considering factors such as weather patterns, holiday schedules, regional differences, location-specific activities, etc. Its benefits include improved forecasting, quicker deliveries, reduced carbon emissions, and more. 

• Agentic AI: Amazon Robotics’ new agentic AI team will use AI to enable its robots to hear, understand natural language, reason instructions given, and act autonomously, where instructions are delivered using simple language. Here, benefits include safer front-line jobs, faster deliveries, and process efficiencies where robots can multitask, among others.

When it comes to deploying robots, Amazon doesn’t fall short.
 

Amazon’s 750,000+ Robots

Recently, Amazon revealed that it has deployed over 750,000 robots that sort, lift, and carry packages, and can carry out other tasks, going back as far as 2012. These nine robot models speed up inventory sortation, make jobs safer, and boost operations. They include:
 

• Sequoia: Launched in Houston, Texas, in 2023, this robot uses AI and computer vision to consolidate inventory and free up storage, enabling Amazon to identify and store inventory up to 75% faster. It retrieved hundreds of thousands of customer orders per week.

• Hercules: Launched in Sumner, Washington, in 2017, this robot uses a forward-facing 3D camera to navigate across Amazon's fulfillment center, finding and bringing pods of items to employees for processing. It can lift up to 1,250 pounds.

• Titan: Launched in San Antonio, Texas, in 2017, this robot also finds and retrieves bulky items from around the fulfillment center. It can lift up to 2,500 pounds—double that of Hercules.

• Vulcan: Launched in Hamburg, Germany, in 2025, this robot (Vulcan Pick) can pick and stop items at the highest and lowest level of inventory pods, as well as manipulate objects within inventory pods. It can carry items up to 5 pounds in weight and 14 inches in length. Its counterpart (Vulcan Stow) can stow items at the top rows of inventory pods, carrying items up to 8 pounds in weight and 14 inches in length.

• Sparrow: Launched in Richmond, Texas, in 2023, this robot can detect, select, handle, and sort individual products and put them into totes before packaging. It can lift up to 12 pounds.

• Packaging Automation: Launched in Euclid, Ohio, in 2023, this robot creates customized packages to fit an order’s dimensions. It helps package hundreds of thousands of customer orders per week.

• Robin: Launched in Lakeland, Florida, in 2022, this robot picks packages from conveyor belts and puts them onto robotic drive units. It was the first-ever robotic arm deployed by Amazon Robotics. It can lift packages up to 50 pounds.

• Cardinal: Launched in Nashville, Tennessee, in 2022, this robot uses advanced AI and computer vision to read labels and strategically organize packages. It can carry packages weighing up to 50 pounds, loading hundreds of packages per hour.

• Proteus: Launched in Nashville, Tennessee, in 2022, this robot uses sensors to move stacked carts from the outbound dock to the loading dock. It works in conjunction with Cardinal and can lift up to 880 pounds. 

Ahead of this, Amazon is engaged in perfecting smarter cooling technology to cool next-gen AI demands, as denser, more powerful chips call for a completely custom liquid cooling system—a requirement the company delivered.

According to Amazon, cooling forms the third pillar to ensure effective and efficient functioning of data centers, where the other two include the building to house servers and power to keep the servers running.

Ensuring the data centers are powered by clean power is something Amazon continuously pursues.

Do you think Amazon’s deal with Talen Energy will inspire other AI companies to follow suit? Do you think the rising power demand caused by AI technology is a cause for concern?

Let us know in the comments below!