Oklo Inc.

Jacob DeWitte and Caroline Cochran co-founded Oklo in July 2013 and have since served as its chief executive officer and chief operating officer, respectively, and as board members. DeWitte earned a B.S. in nuclear engineering from the University of Florida and an S.M. and Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from MIT, and worked on advanced reactor designs including sodium fast reactors, molten salt reactors and next-generation pressurized water reactors, as well as on nuclear fuel cycle technology. Cochran earned a B.A. in economics and a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of OklahomaUniversity of OklahomaThe University of Oklahoma (OU) is the flagship public research university of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. It was created by the Oklahoma Territorial Legislature in 1890, 17 years before statehood; its main campus is in Norman, Oklahoma, with a health campus in Oklahoma City and a campus in Tulsa. It holds the Research 1 (R1) designation in the Carnegie Classification, its academic health system OU Health is the state’s leading academic health system, and its athletic teams, the Sooners, have competed in the Southeastern Conference (SEC) since 2024.Open the full entry and an S.M. in nuclear engineering from MIT, and is a former member of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy Advisory Committee. The company’s leadership page lists Cochran as Caroline DeWitte.⁠[1]

Sam AltmanSam AltmanSam Altman is an entrepreneur and investor, and the co-founder and chief executive officer of OpenAI. He previously served as president of Y Combinator and founded the location-based social service Loopt. He also helped found Tools for Humanity and Merge Labs, has invested in energy and life sciences ventures, and has driven public discussion of AI governance, employment, and wealth distribution.Open the full entry served as chairman of Oklo from 2015 and was one of the company’s initial investors.⁠[2]

On March 11, 2020, Oklo Power, LLC submitted a combined license application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to build and operate the Aurora compact fast reactor at the Idaho National Laboratory site; the design used heat pipes to carry heat from the reactor core to a power conversion system. The NRC accepted the application on June 5, 2020, and Oklo submitted reports on several topics in July 2021 and supplemented them that October.⁠[3]

On January 6, 2022, the NRC denied the application without prejudice for lack of information on key topics. Andrea Veil, director of the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, said the application contained “significant information gaps” in its description of Aurora’s potential accidents and its classification of safety systems and components that prevented further review; the NRC said its action made no safety findings on the Aurora design.⁠[3]

On May 9, 2024, Oklo completed its business combination with the special purpose acquisition company AltC Acquisition Corp., and its shares began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker “OKLO” at market open on May 10. The transaction gave the company about $306 million in gross proceeds, which it said would fund its business plan and the initial deployment of its Aurora powerhouse. Sam Altman, formerly chief executive officer of AltC, remained Oklo’s chairman after the merger.⁠[2]

In December 2024 Oklo signed a 12-gigawatt Master Power Agreement with the data center operator Switch. In its annual report for fiscal 2024, the company said its order book could reach about 14,100 megawatts electric of capacity and listed non-binding letters of intent with EquinixEquinixEquinix, Inc. is a digital infrastructure company headquartered in Redwood City, California, that operates data centers and interconnection services worldwide.Open the full entry, Diamondback EnergyDiamondback EnergyDiamondback Energy, Inc. is an independent oil and natural gas company headquartered in Midland, Texas, operating primarily in the Permian Basin.Open the full entry and Prometheus Hyperscale. As of December 31, 2024, it had 113 full-time employees.⁠[4]

On February 28, 2025, Oklo acquired the radioisotope producer Atomic Alchemy Inc. for $25 million in an all-stock transaction and announced the closing on March 5. Atomic Alchemy became an Oklo subsidiary operating under its own brand; its technologies include the Versatile Isotope Production Reactor (VIPR) and neutron transmutation doping of silicon for semiconductors.⁠[5]

On April 22, 2025, Oklo announced that Sam Altman would step down as chairman, with Jacob DeWitte becoming chairman. Altman said that as Oklo explored strategic partnerships to deploy clean energy for AI, “now is the right time for me to step down”; Caroline Cochran said the company would continue to explore strategic partnerships with AI companies, “including potentially with OpenAIOpenAIOpenAI is an artificial intelligence research and product organization founded in 2015 that develops the GPT model series, ChatGPT, Codex and a developer API, and conducts research on image, speech, video and intelligent agents. After its 2025 restructuring, the nonprofit OpenAI Foundation continues to control the for-profit OpenAI Group PBC. Its growth has involved large-scale fundraising and compute partnerships, and has also been accompanied by controversies over governance, copyright, privacy and AI safety.Open the full entry.”⁠[6]

On September 22, 2025, Oklo held a groundbreaking ceremony at Idaho National Laboratory for its first Aurora powerhouse, Aurora-INL, a sodium-cooled fast reactor using metal fuel that builds on the design and operating heritage of the EBR-II reactor, which ran at the laboratory from 1964 to 1994; the Department of Energy awarded Oklo fuel recovered from EBR-II in 2019. The project is part of the department’s Reactor Pilot Program, under which Oklo was awarded three projects, two to Oklo itself and one to its subsidiary Atomic Alchemy; Kiewit Nuclear Solutions Co. is the lead constructor.⁠[7]

In the first half of 2026 Oklo raised about $1.85 billion, net of offering costs, from sales of common stock. As of June 30, 2026, its cash, cash equivalents and marketable debt securities totaled about $3.01 billion; its net loss for the first half of 2026 was about $81.6 million.⁠[8]

On January 9, 2026, Oklo and Meta announced an agreement to advance Oklo’s plan for a 1.2-gigawatt power campus in Pike County, Ohio, to support MetaMetaMeta (Meta Platforms, Inc.) is a publicly listed American technology company, renamed from Facebook in 2021, that operates social communication, digital advertising, virtual reality, smart glasses and artificial intelligence businesses.Open the full entry’s data centers in the region. Under the agreement Meta may prepay for power and fund early project work, and Oklo will use the funds to secure nuclear fuel and advance the first phase. Oklo owns 206 acres there that were formerly owned by the Department of Energy; pre-construction and site characterization were slated to begin in 2026, with the first phase targeted to come online as early as 2030 and the full 1.2 gigawatts by 2034.⁠[9]

On June 4, 2026, Oklo acquired ARMEC, LLC and its affiliated entity, which specialize in high-precision machining and prototyping for the nuclear industry, and on June 15 it acquired Creative Engineers, Inc. for its chemical process engineering expertise in sodium and alkali-metal systems. The aggregate consideration was about $20.46 million and $12.92 million, respectively.⁠[8]

In June 2026 the Department of Energy’s Idaho Operations Office approved the preliminary documented safety analysis (PDSA) for Aurora-INL, the third of four steps toward the department’s authorization to build a reactor; Oklo had signed its other transaction agreement (OTA) in March, and its nuclear safety design agreement (NSDA) was approved that month. The final step is approval of the documented safety analysis (DSA), which enables final authorization and operation.⁠[10]

On the evening of August 5, 2026, Oklo’s Groves Isotope Test Reactor in Lockhart, Texas, reached criticality. The 15-megawatt-thermal, pool-type, water-cooled, nonpressurized reactor is a project of Oklo Isotopes, formed after Oklo acquired Atomic Alchemy, and falls under the Department of Energy’s Reactor Pilot Program; it was the fifth DOE-authorized reactor to reach criticality and the first to do so on private land. DeWitte said: “Reaching criticality in less than a year is an incredible milestone for our team.”⁠[11]

Oklo says it follows a build-own-operate model, planning to design, build, own and operate advanced nuclear systems and to sell electricity and heat directly to customers under long-term commercial agreements. It has three business lines: power; fuel, including fuel fabrication and recycling; and isotopes for medicine, industry, research and national security. The company says it has nine active projects across five states: Idaho, Alaska, Texas, Ohio and Tennessee.⁠[12]

The Aurora powerhouse product line is designed to produce 15 to 75 megawatts electric; the powerhouses are metal-fueled fast fission plants and, like many advanced fission reactors, are expected to rely on high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU).⁠[4][8]

As of 2026 the company’s website lists around 400 employees and offices in Rockville, Maryland, and Brooklyn, New York, in addition to its headquarters.⁠[13]

Oklo Inc.: Official website: https://oklo.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[12]

X: Public account: https://x.com/oklo (opens in a new window).⁠[12]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/oklo/ (opens in a new window).⁠[12]