Nuclear power company Oklo, chaired by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, started trading on the New York Stock Exchange last week, dropped 54% directly after going public and rebounded to more than half of its initial offering price by market close on Thursday.
Shares opened the day May 10 at $15.50 each and fell to $8.45 each at the closing bell, according to trading data published online by the exchange. By Thursday’s close, shares had risen back to $9.64 each, down about 38% compared with the initial public offering.
Shares were trending lower in the day at deadline Friday for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor, though they touched a weekly high of $11.92 on Wednesday.
Oklo, originally a startup of 22 people run off of private investments, went public when it merged with AltC Acquisition, a special purpose acquisition company also founded and led by Altman. Oklo received about $306 million in the merger and the company was valued at $364 million after the trade, Oklo wrote in a May 10 press release.
Oklo’s goal is to use mini nuclear reactors that run off of nuclear waste, and then sell the energy produced to players such as the Air Force and tech companies. In May 2023, Oklo announced plans to build two nuclear units near the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio. Altman himself told CNBC in July of last year that nuclear energy is the best way to solve problems in artificial intelligence without relying on nonrenewable sources such as fossil fuels.
On Thursday, Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte told CNBC that the company has not generated revenue or deployed any nuclear plants yet. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission denied Oklo’s application in 2022 to build a nuclear reactor at an Idaho site that would power data centers for OpenAI and similar companies. The company is reapplying, but is still in the pre-application stages until early next year, DeWitte says.