Atomic Canyon: Revolutionizing Nuclear Power with AI
The nuclear industry faces a significant challenge: managing massive amounts of documentation. Atomic Canyon, an AI-powered search platform, offers a solution. This innovative startup helps engineers, maintenance technicians, and compliance officers quickly find critical information within billions of pages of documents.
From Healthcare to Nuclear: An Entrepreneur's Vision
Trey Lauderdale, a serial healthcare entrepreneur, recognized the nuclear industry's data problem. Inspired by conversations with workers at the Diablo Canyon Power Plant, he founded Atomic Canyon. The plant, located near Lauderdale's home, holds an estimated two billion pages of documentation.
AI-Powered Search: Taming the Data Deluge
Atomic Canyon uses advanced AI, including sentence embedding and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), to enhance document searchability. This targeted approach minimizes inaccuracies and ensures reliable results.
Initially, the AI models struggled with nuclear-specific terminology. To overcome this, Lauderdale secured a partnership with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, gaining access to their supercomputer. This collaboration provided the necessary computing power to train specialized AI models.
Seed Funding Fuels Growth and Expansion
After securing a deal with Diablo Canyon, Atomic Canyon attracted interest from other nuclear power companies. This momentum led to a $7 million seed round led by Energy Impact Partners. Other investors include Commonweal Ventures, Plug and Play Ventures, Tower Research Ventures, Wischoff Ventures, and previous angel investors.
Focusing on Search: A Foundation for Future Innovation
Atomic Canyon's current focus remains on document search. This foundational layer is crucial for future development. Lauderdale envisions the AI eventually generating document drafts with references, always with human oversight.
“One of the reasons we’re starting generative work around the titles of documents is because getting that wrong might cause someone a little frustration. It doesn’t put anyone at risk at the plant,” Lauderdale said.
With a vast amount of documentation within the nuclear industry, Atomic Canyon has significant potential for growth and expansion in search alone.
Learn more about Atomic Canyon at atomic-canyon.com.
