Bluecore Energy, a maritime nuclear energy startup founded seven months ago by former Uber Freight executive Kofi Asante, announced on July 21, 2026 that it has raised $10 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Slauson & Co. TechCrunch

The round also drew participation from Harlem Capital, Precursor Ventures, Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen, Kevin Hart's Hartbeat Ventures, and a group of angel investors. For a pre-seed, the size is notable: $10 million at that stage typically signals investors are backing more than a deck and a thesis.

Bluecore is building small modular reactors (SMRs) mounted on floating barges. The system is water-cooled in a closed-loop design and requires refueling only once every few years. The barges are designed to dock near coastal communities and connect to the onshore power grid via subsea cables. Asante told TechCrunch the goal is to power approximately 15,000 homes or meet the full energy demands of a major port.

The company has already secured a port terminal, a barge, and a test reactor pressure vessel, and will use the pre-seed capital to advance toward deploying its product. Asante is working with regulatory agencies to embed safety design decisions into the first unit before it is built, rather than retrofitting compliance after the fact. The TechCrunch coverage combines a company-issued announcement with a direct founder interview.

The SMR space has attracted significant capital and regulatory attention in recent years, with multiple startup approaches competing on form factor, fuel cycle, and deployment model. What distinguishes Bluecore's approach is the maritime form factor itself. Floating nuclear is not a new concept: Russia's Akademik Lomonosov, a floating nuclear power plant commissioned in 2019, demonstrated the technical feasibility of reactor-on-barge designs. Bluecore's bet is that the same architecture can be commercialized at smaller scale and directed at a specific customer: ports and the grid infrastructure adjacent to them.

Ports are energy-intensive environments. They run cranes, refrigerated storage, automated handling equipment, and increasingly, shore-power systems for docked vessels. Many sit at the edge of grid-constrained areas where incremental clean power capacity is hard to add through conventional means. A barge-mounted SMR that can dock, connect via subsea cable, and deliver baseload power without a decade of terrestrial permitting is an interesting proposition, though it carries its own regulatory complexity.

The regulatory pathway for marine nuclear is layered. In the United States, a floating reactor would intersect with both the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's licensing authority and Coast Guard maritime safety oversight, plus whatever state-level permitting applies at the port of intended operation. Asante's decision to engage regulators during the design phase, rather than after, is the approach that seasoned nuclear developers tend to recommend. The NRC's licensing process is structured around specific design parameters; building first and seeking approval later has historically been a path to expensive redesign.

Worth flagging: $10 million in pre-seed capital is substantial for a software company but modest for a hardware play involving nuclear reactors, pressure vessels, and marine infrastructure. The fact that Bluecore has already secured physical assets (a terminal, a barge, and a test pressure vessel) suggests the capital is going into tangible build-out rather than early-stage R&D. Even so, moving from a test pressure vessel to a licensed, fueled, grid-connected floating reactor is a multi-year, multi-hundred-million-dollar journey. The pre-seed round funds the next steps, not the destination.

The investor mix is also worth noting. Slauson & Co. and Harlem Capital are firms with a track record of backing underrepresented founders. Precursor Ventures operates at the earliest stages. Chris Larsen's participation brings a fintech-adjacent angle, and Hartbeat Ventures adds celebrity capital to the cap table. The breadth of investor type suggests Bluecore cast a wide net for this round rather than concentrating in nuclear-specialist funds.

Asante's background at Uber Freight is an unconventional entry point into nuclear energy. It does, however, provide a frame: freight logistics is fundamentally about moving large assets through regulated networks to where demand exists. A portable nuclear power plant on a barge is, in a sense, a logistics problem applied to energy generation. Whether that framing translates into a deployable, licensed, and economically competitive product remains the open question. The pre-seed round gives Bluecore the runway to start answering it.