Oklo Inc.

Oklo Inc. is a designer of advanced nuclear reactors based in Santa Clara, California. Founded in 2013 by Jacob and Caroline DeWitte, Oklo Inc. focuses on fast-fission power plants. OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman served as Chairman of the Board of Directors, but stepped down in April 2025 to "avoid a conflict of interest ahead of talks between his company and the nuclear start-up on an energy supply agreement."

The company's name is derived from Oklo, a region in the country of Gabon, Africa where self-sustaining nuclear fission reactions occurred approximately 1.7 billion years ago.

Oklo's business model is aimed at developing, building, and operating fast-fission power plants to sell power to customers, and its main product line for producing power is the Aurora powerhouse product line. The Aurora powerhouse is a design for a small power plant to generate 15-75 MWe of electrical power using a fast neutron reactor to produce heat. Around 20 fast reactors have been tested since the 1950s, with over 400 reactor-years of cumulative operating experience. Oklo Inc's Aurora powerhouse is intended for off-grid applications, including data centers, artificial intelligence, remote communities, industrial sites, and military bases.

Oklo also intends to produce radioisotopes through its nuclear fuel recycling process and fast reactor technology and, in March 2025, fully acquired radioisotopes company Atomic Alchemy. These radioisotopes have a wide range of applications, including medical diagnostic imaging and cancer treatment; industrial uses like non-destructive testing and process control; and energy applications including radioisotope thermoelectric generators, nuclear batteries and fusion research.

As a liquid metal-cooled fast reactor, the Aurora powerhouse will offer several advantages regarding its operation and safety. The Aurora powerhouse features strongly negative reactivity feedback coefficients that arise from the system's physics. These inherent feedback mechanisms will reduce reactor power in response to temperature excursions without requiring any operator intervention or active safety systems. This was demonstrated in the Shutdown Heat Removal Test series at the Experimental Breeder Reactor II, a sodium fast reactor operated between 1964 and 1994 that inspired much of the design of the Aurora powerhouse.

Oklo's application for a combined construction and operating license for the Aurora powerhouse was initially denied by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on January 6, 2022. The NRC cited a lack of information provided by Oklo during the application process and that Oklo could re-submit in the future. Oklo has remained engaged with the NRC since that decision through pre-application activities and readiness work intended to support a future combined license application. In 2025, Oklo reported completing the NRC's pre-application readiness assessment for Phase 1 of its Aurora combined license process. Oklo began pre-construction of its first Aurora powerhouse at Idaho National Laboratory in 2025 and aims to begin commercial operations of the plant by 2028. Oklo has an around 15 GW order book through an agreements with Meta and a Master Power Agreement with Switch and has signed letters of intent with Diamondback Energy and Wyoming Hyperscale to provide electricity for Diamondback's Permian Basin operations and Wyoming Hyperscale's data center campus over 20-year periods.

The company has received venture capital from various investors, including Hydrazine Capital, founded by Sam Altman with Peter Thiel as its sole limited partner; Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz; Ron Conway of SV Angel; Kevin Efrusy of Accel Partners; and Tim Draper of Draper Associates. In July 2023, it was announced that the company planned to go public via a special purpose acquisition company at a value of $850 million. On May 10, 2024, Oklo merged with AltC Acquisition Corp, a SPAC founded and led by Sam Altman, receiving $306 millions in gross proceeds.

In May 2025, Oklo was among several advanced nuclear developers picked for DOE's Reactor Pilot Program as part of a federal initiative to power AI data centers with nuclear energy through fast-track deployment at U.S. Department of Energy sites, including Idaho National Laboratory. A number of SMR construction site projects have received NRC approval, including several for Oklo Inc. Oklo is currently working under Department of Energy oversight in INL as part of the Reactor Pilot Program and will demonstrate viability under DOE before working with the NRC to take the Aurora-INL to commercial operations, expected in 2028. Since 2023, design documents, including the Principal Design Criteria for the Aurora Powerhouse (ML25220A124), have been accepted for review and remain under active evaluation. Oklo has signed a DOE Other Transaction Agreement and the DOE Idaho Operations Office has approved the Nuclear Safety Design Agreement (NSDA) for Oklo's fast-fission power plant at INL.