How Radiant and Heron Are Rethinking Power Generation and Delivery

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Business, Software Eating The World, Culture, Innovation, Disruption, Entrepreneurship, Science, Technology

4.2 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2026

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

a16z general partners Erin Price-Wright and Erik Torenberg speak with Doug Bernauer, founder and CEO of Radiant, and Drew Baglino, founder and CEO of Heron, about rebuilding American energy infrastructure. They discuss portable micro nuclear reactors, solid state power electronics, why delivery rather than generation is the real bottleneck, the case for modular manufacturing, and whether data centers are actually good for the grid.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The grid is breaking.
0:01.2	We're so bottlenecked today on the lines that run crisscross across the country.
0:05.9	I mean, it's this very complicated, giant organic machine.
0:09.4	New power is not the problem.
0:11.4	Delivery is the problem.
0:12.5	The energy services were growing over time in the United States.
0:15.7	The net electricity delivered to accomplish those energy services.
0:19.3	Stayed basically flat.
0:20.8	We can take that momentum and
0:21.9	bring it into a new problem statement, which is power for data centers, power for industrialization,
0:26.8	power for economic growth and prosperity, and for sustainable energy. The idea that the grid can
0:31.9	grow and move from the edge is just not something that we've really been able to process for the last 50 years in the US. The grid itself is civilization, right? Electric power is civilization. You can metamorphosize the entire grip. Civilization can regrow off of a new architecture of moving power, right, and use all of the free energy that's out there. The sunlight is free. You put up a panel, you're getting it. It's very cool, but also your aim is free. It's in the grounds. It's there. You take it and we use it before it just goes away. It makes this like completely new way I think of thinking about nuclear power. It's just in the options list and it wasn't even before. Electric power is civilization. Every socket, every server assumes a grid that works.
1:14.6	When Edison wired Lower Manhattan in 1882, he connected 85 customers across one square mile.
1:21.6	The model that followed, centralized generation, one-way transmission, held for more than a century, now U.S.
1:29.7	electricity demand is rising for the first time in decades. Data centers, electrified transport,
1:36.0	and reshoring are outpacing the efficiency games that mask years of grid underinvestment.
1:43.3	New generation is not the bottleneck.
1:46.1	Delivery is.
1:47.7	This episode examines two responses, portable nuclear reactors built in a factory, and
1:53.6	solid state power electronics designed to rebuild the grid from the edge.
1:57.6	I speak with Doug Bernauer, founder and CEO of Radiant, and Drew Baglino,
2:03.4	founder and CEO of Heron, alongside A16Z general partner, Aaron Price Wright.
	...

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