Sam Altman takes nuclear energy company Oklo public to help power his AI ambitions

Published

1 year ago

May 10, 2024

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On Friday, advanced nuclear fission company Oklo, for which Sam Altman serves as chairman, started 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 led by Altman.

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

Oklo’s business model is based on commercializing nuclear fission, the reaction that fuels all nuclear power plants. Instead of conventional reactors, the company aims to use mini nuclear reactors housed in A-frame structures. Its goal is to sell the energy to end users such as the U.S. Air Force and big tech companies.

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

Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, has said he sees nuclear energy 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 plants in recent years.

“I don’t see a way for us to get there without nuclear,” Altman told CNBC in 2023. “I mean, maybe we could get there just with solar and storage. But from my vantage point, I feel like this is the most likely and the best way to get there.”

In an interview with CNBC Thursday, Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte confirmed that the company has yet to generate revenue and has no nuclear plants deployed at the moment. He said the company is 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 were soaring and investors were looking for growth over profit. But the SPAC market collapsed in 2022 alongside rising rates and hasn’t recovered.

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

“SPACs haven’t exactly had the best performances in the past couple of years, so for us to have sort of the outcome that we’ve had here is obviously a function of the work we put in, but also what we’re building and also the fact that the market sees the opportunity sets here,” said DeWitte, who co-founded the company in 2013. “I think it’s very promising on multiple fronts for [the] nuclear, AI, data center push, as well as the energy transition piece.”

The company has seen its fair share of regulatory setbacks. In 2022, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission denied Oklo’s application for an Idaho reactor. The company has been working on a new application, which it isn’t aiming to submit to the NRC until early next year, DeWitte said, adding that it’s currently in the “pre-application engagement” stage with the commission.

Altman got involved with Oklo while president of the startup incubator Y Combinator. Oklo went into the program in 2014 after an earlier meeting between Altman and DeWitte. In 2015, Altman invested in the company and became chairman.

It’s not Altman’s only foray into nuclear energy or other infrastructure that could power large-scale AI growth.

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

Altman didn’t respond to a request for comment.

In recent years, Altman has also poured money into chip endeavors and investments that could help power the AI tools OpenAI builds.

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

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

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

“What we’ve seen is there’s a lot of interest with AI, specifically,” he said. “AI compute needs are significant. It opens the door for a lot of different approaches in terms of how people think about designing and developing AI infrastructure.”

WATCH: Investing in the future of AI

Technology

More demand than supply gives companies an edge, Jim Cramer says

Published

2 hours ago

October 24, 2025

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More demand than supply gives companies an edge, Jim Cramer says

“Supply constrained,” are the two of the most important words CNBC’s Jim Cramer said he’s heard so far during earnings season and explained why this dynamic is favorable for companies.

“When you’re supplied constrained, you have the ability to raise prices, and that’s the holy grail in any industry,” he said.

Intel‘s strong earnings results were in part because of more demand than supply, Cramer suggested. He noted that the company’s CFO, David Zinsner, said the semiconductor maker is supply constrained for a number of products, and that “industry supply has tightened materially.”

Along with Intel, other tech names that are also supply constrained and performing well on the market include Micron, AMD and Nvidia, Cramer continued.

These companies don’t have enough product in part because the storage needs of artificial intelligence are incredible high, Cramer said. He added that he thinks demand has overwhelmed supply because semiconductor capital equipment companies didn’t manufacture enough of their own machines as they simply didn’t anticipate such a volume of orders.

Outside of tech, Cramer said he thinks airplane maker Boeing and energy company GE Vernova are also supply constrained, adding that he thinks the former will say it’s short on most of its planes when it reports earnings next week. GE Vernova is supply constrained with its power equipment, like turbines that burn natural gas, he continued, which is the primary energy source for the ever-growing crop of data centers.

GE Vernova and Boeing are also set to be winners because they make big-ticket items that other countries can buy from the U.S. to help close the trade deficit, Cramer added.

“In the end, we have more demand than supply in a host of industries and that’s the ticket for good stock performance,” he said. “I don’t see that changing any time soon.”

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Technology

3 takeaways from Intel earnings: Cash flow, foundry progress and hardware surprise

Published

7 hours ago

October 24, 2025

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3 takeaways from Intel earnings: Cash flow, foundry progress and hardware surprise

Wall Street remains skeptical on Intel despite its return to profitability

Intel snapped a losing streak of six straight quarterly losses and returned to profitability in the third quarter.

In its first earnings report since the Trump administration acquired a 10% stake in the company, the U.S. chipmaker posted strong revenue, noting robust demand for chips that it expects to continue into 2026.

Client computing revenue, which includes chips for PCs and laptops, grew 5% year over year, benefiting from PC market stabilization and artificial intelligence PC prospects.

CEO Lip-Bu Tan said in a call with analysts Thursday that artificial intelligence “is a strong foundation for sustainable long-term growth as we execute.”

The chip strength and demand were bright spots, but there were areas of concern as well, with the company’s foundry business still needing a big break.

Here are three takeaways from the chipmaker’s Q3 report:

Cash flow

“We significantly improved our cash position and liquidity in Q3, a key focus for me since becoming CEO in March,” Tan said on a call with analysts Thursday.

Intel landed an $8.9 billion investment from the U.S. government in August, along with $2 billion from Softbank, but has not yet received the $5 billion tied to a deal with Nvidia. The company expects that deal to close by the end of Q4.

With all of those transactions completed, plus the Altera sale, Intel will have $35 billion in cash on hand, CFO David Zinser told CNBC.

The U.S. government is the company’s biggest shareholder, and Intel stock is up more than 50% since Aug. 22, when Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced the deal.

“Like any shareholder, we have to keep in touch with them,” Zinser said of the U.S. stake. “We don’t tell them how the numbers are going before the quarter. We generally talk to them like Fidelity,” another Intel shareholder.

Stock Chart IconStock chart icon

Intel 3-month stock chart.

Foundry

The firm’s foundry remains a work in progress.

Revenue fell 2% over the year before, and it has yet to land a major customer.

Intel now has two fabs running 18A nodes, which are designed for AI and high-performance computing applications.

“We are making steady progress on Intel 18A,” Tan said of its latest chip technology. “We are on track to bring Panther Lake to market this year.”

Zinser said the more advanced 14A nodes won’t be put in supply until the company has “real firm demand.”

Old stuff still selling

Zinser said the company’s older chipmaking processes, or nodes, have continued to do well, “and that was probably the part that was more unexpected.”

Zinser said the chipmaker met some of the central processing unit (CPU) demand with inventory on hand, but they will be behind in Q1, “probably Q2 and maybe in Q3.”

The supply crunch has been with older Intel 10 and 7 manufacturing technologies.

Many customers are opting for less advanced hardware to refresh their operating systems, demonstrating enterprises aren’t waiting for cutting-edge chips when proven technology gets the job done.