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Polish billionaire Michal Solowow is bringing some of Poland's best-known entrepreneurs into his small nuclear reactor business, with a group of investors committing about 500 million zloty, or roughly $130 million, to the venture.
The investors include Rafal Brzoska, founder and chief executive of parcel locker company InPost, and Mati Staniszewski, co-founder and chief executive of artificial intelligence voice startup ElevenLabs. Krzysztof Pawinski, chief executive and co-owner of food and drinks maker Maspex, is investing along with his daughter Marta Pawinska. Dariusz Galezewski, co-founder of drinks brand Oshee, Michal Wypychewicz, Dominik Dolinski, Michal Branski and Bruno Wejchert are also taking part.
The money will go into Synthos Green Energy, or SGE, the company Solowow set up in 2019 to develop small modular reactors using the BWRX-300 design from GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy. Solowow announced the investment on Wednesday.
SGE has also secured 1.35 billion zloty, or about $350 million, in equity commitments from foreign investors, bringing the total pledged capital to about 1.85 billion zloty, according to Polish media reports.
Solowow, widely ranked as Poland's richest person, built his fortune in chemicals through Synthos, one of Europe's largest makers of synthetic rubber, and invests through his fund, MS Galleon. He began studying small reactors in 2017 and has become one of the most prominent private backers of nuclear power in Poland, which still relies heavily on coal for electricity.
The capital raise does not mean construction will start soon. Orlen Synthos Green Energy, SGE's joint venture with state-controlled oil refiner Orlen SA, now expects its first reactor, planned for Wloclawek in central Poland, to start up in 2032. Solowow said in May that he expected the first unit to come online in late 2030.
The partnership with Orlen has been slowed by long negotiations over its terms. Orlen Chief Executive Ireneusz Fafara told Bloomberg on Sept. 24 that only a handful of obstacles remained and that an agreement could be reached by the end of the year.
Solowow is also looking beyond Poland. A consortium he leads is planning a fleet of 14 BWRX-300 reactors across three sites in the United Kingdom, a project estimated at 35 billion pounds, with the first units expected to begin commercial operation in 2034.
The BWRX-300 is a 300-megawatt boiling water reactor. No unit of the design has yet started operating anywhere in the world.
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