Sam Altman takes nuclear startup Oklo public to fuel AI ambitions

On Friday, an advanced nuclear fission company Oklofor which Sam Altman serves as chairman, began trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

The company, which has yet to generate any revenue, went public through a special purpose acquisition company called AltC Acquisition Corp., founded and run by Altman.

Under the ticker symbol “OKLO,” the stock was trading just above $15 Friday morning. Oklo was to receive more than $306 million in gross proceeds upon closing, according to a release.

Oklo’s business model is based on commercializing nuclear fission, the reaction that powers all nuclear power plants. Instead of conventional reactors, the company aims to use mini nuclear reactors housed in A-frame structures. Its purpose is to sell energy to end users such as United States Air Force and large technology companies.

Oklo is currently working to build its first small reactor in Idaho, which could eventually power the types of data centers that OpenAI and other AI companies need to run their AI models and services.

Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, said he sees nuclear power as one of the best ways to solve the problem of growing demand for AI and the energy that powers the technology without relying on fossil fuels. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos have also invested in nuclear power plants in recent years.

“I don’t see a way we’re going to get there without nuclear,” Altman told CNBC in 2023. “I mean, maybe we could get there with just solar and storage. But from my perspective, I feel like that’s the most likely and the best way to get there.”

In an interview with CNBC on Thursday, Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitt confirmed that the company has yet to generate revenue and currently has no nuclear plants in place. He said the company was targeting 2027 for its first plant to come online.

Going the SPAC route is risky. So-called reverse mergers became popular in the low interest rate days of 2020 and 2021, when tech valuations rose and investors sought growth over profit. But the SPAC market collapsed in 2022 along with rising interest rates and hasn’t recovered.

AI-related companies, on the other hand, are the new darlings of Wall Street.

“SPACs haven’t had the best performance over the last couple of years, so to have something like the result we’ve had here is obviously a function of the work we’ve put in, but also what we’re building and also the fact that the market is seeing the opportunities that are emerging here,” said DeWitt, who co-founded the company in 2013. “I think it’s very promising on many fronts for [the] nuclear power, artificial intelligence, data center pressure, and the energy transition.”

The company has seen its fair share of regulatory setbacks. In 2022, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission rejected Oklo’s application for a reactor in Idaho. The company is working on a new application, which it does not aim to submit to the NRC until early next year, DeWitte said, adding that it is currently in the “pre-application engagement” stage with the commission.

Altman became involved with Oklo while serving as president of startup incubator Y Combinator. Oklo entered the program in 2014 after an an earlier meeting between Altman and DeWitt. In 2015, Altman invested in the company and became chairman.

This isn’t Altman’s only foray into nuclear power or other infrastructure that could drive large-scale AI development.

In 2021, Altman led a $500 million funding round in clean energy firm Helion, which is working to develop and commercialize nuclear fusion. Hellion said in a blog post around the time the capital will go to its electricity demonstration generator, Polaris, “which we expect to demonstrate net fusion electricity in 2024.”

Altman did not respond to a request for comment.

In recent years, Altman has also poured money into ventures and investments in chips that could help power AI tools built by OpenAI.

Just before his brief ouster as CEO of OpenAI in November, he was it is reported is seeking billions of dollars for a chip venture codenamed “Tigris” to potentially compete with Nvidia.

In 2018, Altman invested in AI chip startup Rain Neuromorphics, based near OpenAI’s headquarters in San Francisco. The following year, OpenAI signed a letter of intent to spend $51 million on Rain’s chips. In December, the US forced a Saudi Aramco-backed venture capital firm to sell its stake in Rain.

DeWitte told CNBC that the data center represents a “pretty exciting opportunity.”

“What we’ve seen is that there’s a lot of interest in AI in particular,” he said. “The needs of AI computing are significant. This opens the door to many different approaches in terms of how people think about designing and developing AI infrastructure.”

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