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.”
Automated fast food restaurant CaliExpress by Flippy, in Pasadena, Calif., opened in January to considerable hype due to its robot burger makers, but the restaurant launched with another, less heralded innovation: the ability to pay for your meal with your face.
CaliExpress uses a payment system from facial ID tech company PopID. To activate it, users register with a selfie. Then they can opt to be recognized and then PopID’s facial verification confirms the transaction.
It’s not the only fast-food chain to employ the technology. In January, Steak ‘N Shake, a fast-casual restaurant in the Midwest, started installing facial recognition kiosks in its 300 locations for patron check-in. The chain says that using PopID takes two to three seconds compared with a check-in with a QR code or mobile app, which can take up to 20 seconds.
Biometric payment options are becoming more common. Amazon introduced pay-by-palm technology in 2020, and while its cashier-less store experiment has faltered, it installed the tech in 500 of its Whole Foods stores last year. Mastercard, which is working with PopID, launched a pilot for face-based payments in Brazil back in 2022, and it was deemed a success — 76% of pilot participants said they would recommend the technology to a friend. Late last year, Mastercard said it was teaming with NEC to bring its Biometric Checkout Program to the Asia-Pacific region.
“Our focus on biometrics as a secure way to verify identity, replacing the password with the person, is at the heart of our efforts in this area,” said Dennis Gamiello, executive vice president of identity products and innovation at Mastercard. He added that based on positive feedback from the pilot and its research, the checkout technology will come to more new markets later this year.
As stores implement biometric technology for a variety of purposes, from payments to broader anti-theft systems, consumer blowback, and lawsuits, are rising. In March, an Illinois woman sued retailer Target for allegedly illegally collecting and storing her and other customers’ biometric data via facial recognition technology without their consent. Amazon and T-Mobile are also facing legal actions related to biometric technology.
In other countries, most notably China, biometric payment systems are comparatively mature, from visitors to McDonald’s in China being able to use facial recognition technology to pay for their orders, to systems offered by AliPay, which launched biometric payment as far back as 2015 and began testing the technology at KFC locations in China in 2018.
A deal that PopID recently signed with JPMorgan is a sign of things to come in the U.S., said John Miller, PopID CEO, and what he thinks will be a “breakthrough” year for pay-by-face technology.
The consumer case is tied to the growing importance of loyalty programs. Most quick-service restaurants require consumers to provide their loyalty information to earn rewards — which means pulling out a phone, opening an app, finding the link to the loyalty QR code, and then presenting the QR code to the cashier or reader. For payment, consumers are typically choosing between pulling out their wallet, selecting a credit card, and then dipping or tapping the card or pulling out their phone, opening it with Face ID, and then presenting it to the reader. Miller says PopID simplifies this process by requiring just tapping an on-screen button, and then looking briefly at a camera for both loyalty check-in and payment.
“We believe our partnership with JPMorgan is a watershed moment for biometric payments as it represents the first time a leading merchant acquirer has agreed to push biometric payments to its merchant customers,” Miller said. “JPMorgan brings the kind of credibility and assurance that both merchants and consumers need to adopt biometric payments.”
Consumers are getting more comfortable with biometric technology. The majority still prefer fingerprint scans to facial recognition, according to a 2023 survey from PYMENTS, but age is a factor. Gen Z consumers are more open to facial recognition than to fingerprint scans or entering a password.
Juniper Research forecasts over 100% market growth for global biometric payments between 2024 and 2028, and by 2025, $3 trillion in mobile, biometric-secured payments.
To be sure, security concerns and the hacking of biometric data as a consequence of sharing it, will remain important to the evolving usage and conversation.
Sheldon Jacobson, a professor in computer science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, said he sees biometric identification as part of a technology continuum that has evolved from payment with a credit card to smartphones. “The next natural step is to simply use facial recognition,” he said.
Concerns about privacy and facial recognition, he says, are overblown. “We voluntarily give up our privacy all the time,” Jacobson said. “We post on Facebook, we use social media and we are basically giving up our privacy. I tell people constantly that everything about you is already out there.”
Digital pharmacy startup Hims & Hers Health is introducing access to compounded GLP-1 weight loss injections, the company announced Monday.
Shares of the company jumped more than 30% Monday morning.
The company, which offers a range of direct-to-consumer treatments for conditions like erectile dysfunction and hair loss, launched a weight loss program in December. But GLP-1 medications — such as Ozempic and Wegovy, which have skyrocketed in popularity — were not previously offered as part of that program.
Customers can access the compounded GLP-1 medications via a prescription from a licensed health-care provider on the Hims & Hers platform. Hims & Hers said it plans to make branded GLP-1 medications available to its customers once supply is consistently available.
The company’s oral medication kits start at $79 a month, and its compounded GLP-1 injections will start at $199 a month.
Even before it added compounded GLP-1s to its portfolio, Hims & Hers said in its fourth-quarter earnings report that it expects its weight loss program to bring in more than $100 million in revenue by the end of 2025. The company plans to offer updated guidance in its next earnings report.
The GLP-1 market, dominated so far by pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk, has faced supply constraints in recent months as the drugs get expanded approval from health regulators and increased health coverage.
GLP-1s mimic a hormone produced in the gut to tamp down a person’s appetite and regulate their blood sugar. When those medications are in shortage, certain manufacturers can prepare a compounded version if they meet U.S. Food and Drug Administration requirements.
The FDA does not review the safety and efficacy of compounded products, which are custom-made alternatives to brand drugs designed to meet a specific patient’s needs.
In a January release, the FDA said patients should not use a compounded GLP-1 drug if an approved drug, such as Wegovy, is available.
Hims & Hers CEO Andrew Dudum told CNBC that the company is “confident” that customers will be able to access a consistent supply of the compounded medications.
Dudum said Hims & Hers has spent the last year learning about the GLP-1 supply chain and has partnered with one of the largest generic manufacturers in the country that has FDA oversight.
“We have a certain degree of exclusivity with that facility that will guarantee our consumers consistent volume and supply,” he said.
An aerial view of the city of San Francisco skyline and the Golden Gate Bridge in California, October 28, 2021.
Carlos Barria | Reuters
LONDON — The British government is expanding its facility for testing “frontier” artificial intelligence models to the United States, in a bid to further its image as a top global player tackling the risks of the tech and to increase cooperation with the U.S. as governments around the world jostle for AI leadership.
The government on Monday announced it would open a U.S. counterpart to its AI safety summit, a state-backed body focused on testing advanced AI systems to ensure they’re safe, in San Francisco this summer.
The U.S. iteration of the AI Safety Institute will aim to recruit a team of technical staff headed up by a research director. In London, the institute currently has a team of 30. It is chaired by Ian Hogarth, a prominent British tech entrepreneur who founded the music concert discovery site Songkick.
In a statement, U.K. Technology Minister Michelle Donelan said the AI Safety Summit’s U.S. rollout “represents British leadership in AI in action.”
“It is a pivotal moment in the U.K.’s ability to study both the risks and potential of AI from a global lens, strengthening our partnership with the U.S. and paving the way for other countries to tap into our expertise as we continue to lead the world on AI safety.”
The expansion “will allow the U.K. to tap into the wealth of tech talent available in the Bay Area, engage with the world’s largest AI labs headquartered in both London and San Francisco, and cement relationships with the United States to advance AI safety for the public interest,” the government said.
San Francisco is the home of OpenAI, the Microsoft-backed company behind viral AI chatbot ChatGPT.
The AI Safety Institute was established in November 2023 during the AI Safety Summit, a global event held in England’s Bletchley Park, the home of World War II code breakers, that sought to boost cross-border cooperation on AI safety.
The expansion of the AI Safety Institute to the U.S. comes on the eve of the AI Seoul Summit in South Korea, which was first proposed at the U.K. summit in Bletchley Park last year. The Seoul summit will take place across Tuesday and Wednesday.
The government said that, since the AI Safety Institute was established in November, it’s made progress in evaluating frontier AI models from some of the industry’s leading players.
It said Monday that several AI models completed cybersecurity challenges but struggle to complete more advanced challenges, while several models demonstrated PhD-level knowledge of chemistry and biology.
Meanwhile, all models tested by the institute remained highly vulnerable to “jailbreaks,” where users trick them into producing responses they’re not permitted to under their content guidelines, while some would produce harmful outputs even without attempts to circumvent safeguards.
Tested models were also unable to complete more complex, time-consuming tasks without humans there to oversee them, according to the government.
It didn’t name the AI models that were tested. The government previously got OpenAI, DeepMind, and Anthropic to agree to opening their coveted AI models up to the government to help inform research into the risks associated with their systems.
The development comes as Britain has faced criticism for not introducing formal regulations for AI, while other jurisdictions, like the European Union, race ahead with AI-tailored laws.
The EU’s landmark AI Act, which is the first major legislation for AI of its kind, is expected to become a blueprint for global AI regulations once it is approved by all EU member states and enters into force.
