Sam Altman-backed nuclear startup is going public through his SPAC

Oklo, a nuclear-fission startup backed by Sam Altman, plans to go public through a merger with his special-purpose acquisition company, company officials said Tuesday.

- Jennifer Hiller

The deal would add to recent SPAC mergers involving nuclear companies and test investor appetite for clean-energy startups, which surged in 2020 and early 2021 before falling out of favor. Companies such as Oklo trying to build a new generation of smaller nuclear power projects must prove they can deliver on time and on budget, unlike the fleet of large nuclear plants that preceded them.

California-based Oklo is developing a small modular nuclear reactor design and plans to sell electricity into the competitive power market, including through the kind of agreements that wind and solar developers often cut with corporate and industrial firms that want to buy carbon-free power.

Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI-the artificial-intelligence startup behind the viral chatbot ChatGPT-said the nuclear-energy industry can make electricity that is "a way better deal than anything else out there."

Nuclear fission can generate energy without green-housegas emissions, and, unlike other technologies such as solar, it can do so 24 hours a day. The process of splitting atoms in nuclear-fission power plants provides nearly 20% of U.S. electricity.

Oklo is valued in the transaction at roughly $850 million. Somewhat unusually, it would go public by combining with AltC Acquisition, a SPAC co-founded by Altman and Michael Klein, a former Citigroup banker and serial blank-check company creator.

Also known as a blank-check company, a SPAC is a shell company that raises money, then lists publicly with the sole intent of combining with a private company to take it public. After regulators approve the transaction, the company going public replaces the SPAC in the stock market.