AMPERA Opens Florida Headquarters to Advance Thorium Microreactor Development

AMPERA’s new Palm Beach Gardens headquarters is less a celebration than a checkpoint. The company opened its world headquarters on April 8 in the Gardens Innovation Center at PGA National Commerce Park, giving its thorium microreactor pitch a nearly 100,000-square-foot home where the next questions are capital, headcount, technical maturity and licensing.

The grand opening drew more than 150 community leaders, elected officials and employees, with Michael Prince, Kelly Smallridge, Jay Cashmere, Marcie Tinsley and Noel Martinez among those named by the company. AMPERA says the campus will house research and development, engineering, additive manufacturing, assembly operations, administration and back-office functions, a mix that turns the site into more than a ceremonial address at 358 Hiatt Drive, Suite 104.

That matters because AMPERA is not selling a conventional reactor story. The company says it is developing subcritical thorium-fueled microreactor systems in 15 MWe and 30 MWe configurations, aimed at AI-era power demand as well as defense, data centers, maritime and industrial customers. Founder and CEO Brian Matthews has said he brings nearly three decades of experience in nuclear engineering, reactor physics, safety analysis and regulatory strategy, and he has cast AMPERA as a safety-first, licensing-oriented developer.

The regulatory path is now part of the pitch. AMPERA has said it intends to pursue U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing under the agency’s new Part 53 framework, a move that gives the company a more defined path than many early-stage advanced-reactor concepts have had in the past. The company has also tried to widen its commercial base, including a strategic collaboration with Scorpio Tankers announced on April 2 to develop maritime micronuclear power solutions for marine, shipping, offshore and port infrastructure uses.

Palm Beach County boosters are also treating the headquarters as an economic-development signal. The Business Development Board of Palm Beach County says AMPERA expects to add 100 jobs by the end of 2026 and roughly 2,500 positions over five years at a future full-scale production location. The company says those jobs would span nuclear engineers, physicists, safety experts, computer scientists, materials analysts and financial professionals, which suggests the real prize is not just office occupancy but the buildout of a regional advanced-nuclear workforce.

AMPERA announced its Palm Beach Gardens headquarters in December and said then that it wanted customer locations by 2030. The new campus is meant to make that timeline sound less like a slogan and more like a roadmap, with R&D, manufacturing and regulatory work now under one roof.