AtkinsRéalis bets on nuclear-powered AI factories amid data centre surge

The AtkinsRéalis headquarters is seen in this photo in Montreal. THE CANADIAN PRESS /Christinne Muschi

MONTREAL — AtkinsRéalis Group Inc.‘s nuclear business powered a 34 per cent jump in profits last quarter, as the engineering company banks on the technology to exploit soaring demand for energy-hungry AI data centres.

The Montreal-based firm’s nuclear division now accounts for a quarter of total revenue versus 15 per cent two years ago, said CEO Ian Edwards.

Preliminary work is now underway at Ontario’s Pickering nuclear power station after AtkinsRéalis signed a multibillion-dollar contract for a life extension on four reactors last year. Money is also rolling in from Romania, where the company secured a deal last year to extend the life of a reactor at the Cernavoda nuclear plant — after winning a contract in 2024 to build two new multibillion-dollar reactors there.

• Latest updates on company news here

The company’s ambitions go beyond traditional nuclear plants. In March, it announced it was teaming up with Nvidia to ramp up deployment of nuclear-powered artificial intelligence factories, as the two parties explore how to work the chipmaking giant’s technologies into developing the facilities.

“It’s opened the door to meetings with other hyper-scalers,” Edwards told analysts on a conference call Thursday, saying electricity production for the energy-intensive sites needs to increase tenfold.

“The issue is clearly electrical energy for data centres.”

A mid-size reactor built by Candu Energy — an AtkinsRéalis subsidiary that draws on nuclear technology licensed exclusively by AtkinsRéalis from the federal government — takes about seven years to plan and build, he said. That time frame is similar to the length of construction for a combined-cycle gas turbine, increasingly used to power AI data centres.

“It’s getting comparable to combined-cycle gas,” Edwards said. “That’s a big opportunity for us that we are looking to clearly exploit.”

On Thursday, AtkinsRéalis reported that net income attributable to shareholders vaulted to $92.8 million in the quarter ended March 31 from $69.1 million in the same period a year earlier.

• Latest technology news on BNNBloomberg.ca

Revenue totalled $3.00 billion, up 18 per cent from $2.55 billion the year before.

On an adjusted basis, AtkinsRéalis earned 80 cents per diluted share versus 63 cents per diluted share in the first quarter of 2025. The result beat analysts’ expectations of 74 cents per diluted share, according to financial markets firm LSEG Data & Analytics.

The company’s backlog stood at $20.28 billion as of March 31, down from $20.41 billion a year ago.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 14, 2026.

Christopher Reynolds, The Canadian Press