Sam Altman-backed nuclear power company Oklo (OKLO) has boomed on the stock market over the past month as investors look to nuclear energy as the next big AI trade.
Shares in the company, which is designing so-called small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs), have surged nearly 140% over the past month on Big Tech’s growing interest in nuclear power. SMRs are designed to produce cheaper, faster, greener energy than traditional nuclear facilities.
Amazon (AMZN) and Google (GOOG) in mid-October announced substantial investments in SMR projects as they look to balance their climate goals with the growing energy demands of the data centers powering their various AI software. Oracle’s (ORCL) Larry Ellison announced in September that the company intends to build a data center powered by SMRs.
“A nuclear power renaissance is underway with nuclear increasingly viewed as a solution which solves both the increased need for baseload power and the need to decarbonize,” wrote Craig-Hallum analyst Eric Stine in a recent note to investors. Baseload power refers to the day-to-day energy demand on an electrical grid.
Stine said Google and Amazon’s investments are “truly just the beginning of a multi-decade megatrend.”
Goldman Sachs estimates that global data center power consumption will grow 160% by 2030, driven by demand from artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, separate data from the International Atomic Energy Agency shows nuclear power production in North America potentially doubling by 2050.
Stocks of other firms making similar tech to Oklo’s, such as NuScale (SMƒR) and NANO Nuclear Energy (NNE), also surged following news of Google’s and Amazon’s investments on Oct. 14 and Oct. 16, respectively, before paring gains this week.
“The opportunity is so massive here in the market that there’s going to be a good number of folks that are successful,” Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte told Yahoo Finance.
In fact, the SMR market could grow to $300 billion by 2040, according to research cited by Citi analysts.
Oklo went public in May through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, AltC Acquisition Corp., which Altman co-founded. In addition to Altman, Cathie Wood and Peter Thiel are on its list of investors.
Sam Altman owned a 2.6% stake in the company, according to a regulatory filing in June. He became chair of Oklo in 2024 after serving as its CEO for three years.
While Oklo was founded in 2013, well ahead of the AI boom, the energy needs of artificial intelligence have been a boon to the firm as it builds its client book, DeWitte said.
