Oklo stock (NYSE: OKLO) jumped over 15% on Friday after Meta announced an agreement to support development of a 1.2-gigawatt advanced nuclear campus in Pike County, southern Ohio.
The landmark deal that marks the small modular reactor maker’s first major commercial validation and signals growing corporate appetite for nuclear power to fuel artificial intelligence operations.
The announcement underscores a critical inflection point: as AI data centers consume electricity at rates that strain aging power grids, major tech companies are pivoting toward nuclear energy.
For Oklo, a venture-backed startup that has operated as a pre-revenue technology company until now, the Meta partnership amounts to a proof-of-concept that corporate offtakes can actually work.
Oklo stock: Why big tech is paying for nuclear power
Meta’s announcement Friday revealed an ambitious three-prong nuclear strategy designed to secure up to 6.6 gigawatts of power by 2035, equivalent to electricity for roughly 5 million homes.
The company signed 20-year power purchase agreements with Vistra for three existing nuclear plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania, while simultaneously investing in development partnerships with Oklo and TerraPower.
With these partnerships, the tech giant aims to bring next-generation small modular reactors online within the decade.
The logic is straightforward: AI training and inference, the computation required to run large language models like Meta’s own AI systems, demand astronomical amounts of electricity.
Goldman Sachs forecasts global data center power demand could rise 165% by 2030 compared with 2023 levels, with AI workloads driving the surge.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives notes that corporate offtakes materially reduce both financing and execution risk for nuclear developers, allowing companies like Oklo to lock in revenue streams before regulators approve their designs.
For hyperscalers like Meta, securing power today is no longer optional, it is a strategic necessity to remain competitive in the AI arms race.
From pilot to pay-off
Under the Meta agreement, the tech giant will prepay for electricity and provide funding to advance Oklo’s Aurora powerhouse project, designed to produce up to 1.2 gigawatts in Pike County by 2034.
Pre-construction begins in 2026, with the first phase coming online by 2030.
Critically, Meta’s support de-risks early procurement, fuel acquisition and site infrastructure, allowing Oklo to move from vaporware status to a company with validated customer demand and partial project funding.
The market’s enthusiasm, however, comes with caveats.
Small modular reactors (SMRs) remain unproven at commercial scale in the United States.
While NuScale achieved NRC design approval for its SMR technology in 2020 and again in May 2025 for an uprated design, regulatory timelines for actual construction permits and operating licenses still stretch 30 months or longer.
Oklo’s Aurora reactors, which use fast-neutron technology to burn recycled nuclear waste, have no NRC design certification yet, only Meta’s commercial commitment.
The deal is a clear validation and near-term catalyst, but Oklo stock will need to clear regulatory milestones and hit project financing schedules to justify current valuations.
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