Nuclear power company Oklo, chaired by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, started trading on the New York Stock Exchange Friday and dropped 54% directly after going public.
Shares opened the day Friday at $15.50 each and had fallen to $8.45 each at the closing bell, according to trading data published online by the exchange.
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 Friday 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.
