Sam Altman-backed nuclear energy company Oklo (OKLO) has soared on the stock market over the past month as investors view nuclear energy as the next big AI business.
Shares in the company, which designs so-called small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs), have risen nearly 140% in the past month due to Big Tech’s growing interest in nuclear power. SMRs are designed to produce cheaper, faster and greener energy than traditional nuclear facilities.
Amazon (AMZN) and Googling (GOOG) announced substantial investments in SMR projects in mid-October as they look to balance their climate goals with the growing energy needs of the data centers that power their various AI software. Oracle’s (ORCL) Larry Ellison announced in September that the company plans to build a data center powered by SMRs.
“There is a nuclear energy renaissance underway, with nuclear power increasingly being seen as a solution that solves both the increased need for baseload energy and the need to decarbonize,” wrote Craig-Hallum analyst Eric Stine in a recent note to investors. Base load power refers to the daily energy demand on an electricity grid.
Stine said Google and Amazon’s investments are “really just the beginning of a multi-decade megatrend.”
Goldman Sachs estimates that Global energy consumption from data centers will grow by 160% by 2030driven by the demand of artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, separate data from the International Atomic Energy Agency shows that nuclear energy production in North America may double by 2050.
Shares of other companies that make similar technology to Oklo’s, such as NuScale (SMƒR) and NANO Nuclear Energy (NNE), also rose on news of Google and Amazon’s investments on Oct. 14 and 16, respectively, before reporting earnings this week compensated..
“The opportunity here in the marketplace is so great that a large number of people will be successful,” Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte told Yahoo Finance.
According to research from Citi analysts, the SMR market could grow to $300 billion by 2040.
Okay went public in May through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, AltC Acquisition Corp., of which Altman co-founded. In addition to Altman, Cathie Wood and Peter Thiel are on the list of investors.
Sam Altman owned a 2.6% stake in the company, according to a June regulatory filing. He became chairman of Oklo in 2024 after serving as CEO for three years.
Although Oklo was founded in 2013, well before the rise of AI, the energy needs of artificial intelligence have been a boon to the company as it builds its customer base, DeWitte said.