Sam Altman just took a nuclear energy startup public for $500 million. Its CEO wants to provide ‘energy at planetary scales for a billion-plus years’
OpenAI founder Sam Altman just took another step toward his vision of a future powered by A.I. and widely affordable clean energy, with the announcement that Oklo, a startup specializing in “nuclear microreactors” of which he is chairman, will go public.
Oklo announced Tuesday that it will go public in 2024 via SPAC with AltC. Acquisition Corp, a company cofounded by Altman and Michael Klein, former CEO of Global Banking at Citigroup. Oklo is attempting to replicate the process of nuclear fission that occurs in nuclear power plants, with much smaller reactors.
The company was founded in 2013 by Caroline Cochran, currently Oklo’s chief operating officer, and Jacob DeWitte, its CEO. Altman became involved in 2013 when he met DeWitte and Cochran, who would eventually join Y Combinator, the famed startup accelerator of which Altman was president at the time, according to CNBC.
So far, the company has raised around $50 million, DeWitte told Fortune in a phone interview Tuesday. Data from deal-tracking website Pitchbook shows Oklo also received roughly $420,000 in grant money from the U.S. Department of Energy. The public offering is set to bring in an additional $500 million, which Oklo says it plans to use to build its first microreactor.
"Being public is going help us attract the right kind of financing, and at a larger scale given the similarities of what's been done in other power generation technologies with similar [power sales] models," DeWitte says, referencing the business models of emerging renewable energy companies after which Oklo is modeling itself.
Oklo envisions that its microreactor technology would be housed inside of smaller power plants, that according to renderings on its website look something like Northern European mountain lodges, which would generate nuclear power without creating nuclear waste. If their hypothesis proves out, it would allow for these smaller nuclear reactors to operate without constant human supervision, a critical component since Oklo’s power plants are designed to be built in remote locations.
DeWitte went on to explain that Oklo sees two promising opportunities for potential future customers: The first is in facilities like data centers or military bases that are looking to expand their power capacity but don't have ready access to an existing power grid; and the second is as a new solution to help companies meet their decarbonization goals.
In a promotional video, Dewitte offers a glimpse into the company’s ambitions. “Building one [plant] is relatively easy, the fun part is thinking about how you build hundreds or thousands,” he says.