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Oklo, a nuclear energy start-up chaired by Open AI’s Sam Altman, has struck a major corporate power supply deal as the industry rushes to meet the surging needs of artificial intelligence.
The 20-year agreement with Switch Inc, a large privately held data centre operator, is to build reactors with a total capacity of up to 12 gigawatts — enough in total to power all 7.6mn households in New York state.
Oklo claimed the agreement was among the largest clean power deals in history, even though it is non-binding and the company’s technology is years from production.
Jacob DeWitte, Oklo’s co-founder and chief executive, told the Financial Times that if binding terms are reached, the deal could be worth multiple billions of dollars.
The contract is the latest announced between nuclear developers and the technology industry, as the artificial intelligence boom creates a dire need for high-wattage, low-carbon energy supplies.
Oklo is developing small modular reactors — new types of advanced nuclear plants with a capacity of 300 megawatts or less, which is about a third of standard facilities.
Big Tech is increasingly betting that small reactors can deliver enough energy to run AI systems, even though no western company has yet successfully deployed the technology.
DeWitt said nuclear was the only power source that could sustainably meet the massive energy demands of the AI revolution. He downplayed critics’ concerns about the risks inherent in nuclear energy, which is highly regulated and has been subject to delays and cost overruns.
“We are entering a new world due to the size of the energy demand,” DeWitte said in an interview. “You can’t do it with renewables, as you would need a lot of gas back-up capacity and a lot of folks want a clean solution.”
Oklo is aiming to deploy its first 15MW reactor by late 2027 at the Idaho National Laboratory. Rival US-based nuclear developers X-energy and Kairos Power recently signed power deals with Amazon and Google to provide low-carbon electricity to power their data centres.
Microsoft also struck a corporate power agreement in September with Constellation Energy that will reactivate the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania.
Adam Stein, director of nuclear energy innovation at The Breakthrough Institute, a Washington think-tank, said Big Tech’s contracts with nuclear developers would give investors confidence to support a nascent industry.
“They are intentionally taking on some of that technology risk, the first-mover risk in their power-purchase agreements,” he said. “This is how new technology gets to market.”
But some analysts are sceptical that the new crop of nuclear start-ups will ever deliver.
“These agreements do not appear to be the kinds of serious, substantial, and sustained financial commitments — on the order of many billions of dollars over decades — that would be necessary to fully realise these speculative nuclear projects,” said Edwin Lyman, nuclear power safety director for the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Although nuclear power generation does not emit carbon dioxide, some critics deny it is a clean power source, pointing to the radioactive waste it creates, which must be stored indefinitely.
Switch operates several large-scale data centres in Nevada, Texas and Atlanta using renewable power. To fulfil the maximum terms of the contract, Oklo would have to build hundreds of its small reactors across the US to serve Switch’s facilities.
Oklo, which counts technology entrepreneurs Altman and Peter Thiel among its early investors, listed in New York in March and has a $2.2bn market capitalisation.
Chris Wright, Donald Trump’s nominee to become US energy secretary, is a director of the company. DeWitte said Wright would step down from the board if he is confirmed by the US Senate.
