By Renée Jean
Publication Date: 2025-12-24 22:26:00
One of the first things Kemmerer Mayor Robert Bowen did when TerraPower announced his city would be home to the Bill Gates-backed company’s first sodium-cooled fast reactor was look for a way to invest in the company that was investing in his town.
“I wanted to try to buy the stock,” Bowen told Cowboy State Daily. “But it was all privately held. There were no public stock options.”
Bowen saw that as a “green flag” at the time for the company itself.
To him, it means the company will put its own money behind this, taking most of the risks. To do that, the people involved must believe in the viability of what they’re doing.
But the fact that TerraPower is 100% privately held also throws up a bit of red flag when it comes to an investment pitch that’s been aggressively advertised on Facebook lately, popping up in the feeds of a lot of Cowboy State residents.
The pitch, in a long-winded and very non-specific way, touts an “incredible energy breakthrough” that could put Kemmerer, Wyoming, at the center of a “once-in-a-lifetime wealth explosion and mint new millionaires across America.”
The pitch suggests that Brownstone Research has secret insight into how regular people can get in on the millions that will undoubtedly be made.
