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I’ve been watching the conversation around Oklo, and I have to say, the financial world is... I’ve been watching the conversation around Oklo, and I have to say, the financial world is missing the point. Completely. Pundits are stuck debating price targets and revenue projections, labeling a company with a $25 billion valuation and zero income a "meme stock" or a "bubble." They’re looking at the stock chart, but they’re not seeing the story. And the story here is one of the most important of our time.
This isn't about a stock. This is about the physical infrastructure for the next stage of civilization. When I first dug into Oklo’s mission and saw the direct, almost umbilical connection to the insatiable energy demands of generative AI, I honestly just sat back in my chair, speechless. We are witnessing the birth of the engine that will power the next great leap in intelligence, and people are worried about next quarter's earnings? It’s like watching the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk and complaining about the lack of in-flight beverage service.
Let’s be clear: the debate over Oklo’s valuation is a distraction. The real question isn’t whether the company is overvalued today. The real question is, what is the price of building the future?
A New Kind of Power for a New Kind of Mind
For decades, we’ve treated computation and energy as two separate industries. You have tech companies, and you have utility companies. That era is over. The AI revolution, led by figures like Sam Altman—who, not coincidentally, was Oklo’s chairman—has fused them together. AI is not just software; it’s a physical process that consumes staggering amounts of electricity. Every ChatGPT query, every AI-generated image, every scientific model, it all draws power from a grid that was designed for a different century.
This is the bottleneck. We can design ever-more-powerful AI models, but what good are they if we can’t plug them in?
This is where Oklo enters the picture. The company is designing and building advanced small modular reactors, or SMRs. In simpler terms, think of them not as giant, traditional nuclear power plants, but as compact, hyper-efficient nuclear batteries that can be built right where the power is needed most—like next to a sprawling data center campus in the middle of a desert. The sheer elegance of this is breathtaking—it means we can decouple the growth of digital intelligence from the constraints of a century-old power grid, creating clean, localized, and unbelievably dense energy sources on demand, which is a paradigm shift of epic proportions.
This is the symbiotic relationship that the market is just beginning to understand. AI needs a new kind of power source: clean, reliable, and scalable. Oklo is building it. This isn't just a clever business model; it feels like a necessary step in technological evolution. What happens when our greatest tool for innovation—AI—is no longer limited by the energy we can feed it? What problems could we solve if a research institute could have its own dedicated, carbon-free power source for a supercomputer?
Navigating the Gravity of Reality
Now, let’s talk about the skepticism, because it’s not entirely unfounded. Critics point to the headlines—like those trying to explain why Oklo Inc. (OKLO) Continued to Skyrocket This Week. Here is Why.—and rightly note that the company is years away from generating revenue, let alone profit. They see a company burning through tens of millions of dollars a year with nothing but a plan and a soaring stock price. They see risk.
I see something different. I see a moonshot.
Viewing Oklo through the lens of a traditional investment is like trying to measure the speed of light with a yardstick. This isn't a company selling widgets. It's a company undertaking a mission with immense upfront complexity and a payoff that stretches out to 2050. This is infrastructure. It reminds me of the early days of the transcontinental railroad. Imagine an analyst in 1865 looking at the Union Pacific Railroad. The capital expenditure was astronomical, the regulatory hurdles were a nightmare, and the profits were years, if not decades, away. By every conventional measure of the time, it was a terrible investment.
But it wasn't just an investment in a company; it was an investment in connecting a continent. It fundamentally reshaped the economy and the very idea of the nation. Oklo is building the energy railroad for our new digital continent.
Of course, with nuclear power comes immense responsibility. This isn't a "move fast and break things" startup culture. This is a "measure a dozen times, simulate a thousand times, and get it perfect" mission for humanity. The challenges are real: navigating the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is a gauntlet, building a robust supply chain for advanced HALEU fuel is critical, and ensuring absolute safety and security is non-negotiable. These are the engineering and political puzzles we must solve. But are they unsolvable? I don’t think so. The alternative—stifling the growth of AI or powering it with fossil fuels—is far more dangerous in the long run.
The Dawn of the Atomic Age, Part Two
So, what is Oklo? Is it a risky, pre-revenue company with a wildly inflated stock price? Or is it the beginning of a new energy paradigm? I believe it’s the latter. The market’s excitement isn't irrational hype. It's the first tremor of a seismic shift. It's the collective realization that the future of computation and the future of energy are the same story. We are not just watching a stock; we are watching a bet being placed on a future where our ambition is no longer limited by the plug in the wall. This is what it looks like when we decide to build the power source for the world we want to live in.