Oklo jumps 20% in pre-market as Meta unveils nuclear deals to power data centers

The deal between Meta and Oklo Inc. aims at securing a massive supply of carbon-free energy to power Meta’s artificial intelligence infrastructure. The agreement centers on the development of a large-scale nuclear power campus in Pike County, Ohio. The project targets a total capacity of 1.2 gigawatts (GW).

Meta will prepay for power and provide upfront funding. This capital is specifically intended to help Oklo secure nuclear fuel and accelerate the deployment of its reactor technology. The facility will be built on over 200 acres of land in Southern Ohio that Oklo acquired (formerly owned by the Department of Energy), aiming to turn the region into a hub for advanced energy.

Meta’s aggressive move into nuclear energy is driven primarily by the AI boom, which has created an urgent need for vast amounts of reliable energy. Unlike solar and wind energy, which fluctuate with the weather, nuclear power provides firm baseload energy. This is critical for AI data centers that run around the clock and cannot afford power interruptions. Nuclear offers a way to generate massive amounts of power without carbon emissions.

The Oklo Inc. stock $OKLO jumped more than 20% in pre-market trading on the Meta deal news.

This is just another example of the “Nuclear Renaissance” that we’ve been witnessing in this decade. Following the 2011 Fukushima disaster, the nuclear industry entered a “lost decade” where many countries phased out plants or halted new construction. However, between 2020 and 2024, global investment in nuclear power began growing at a compound annual rate of 14%, following nearly five years of zero growth.

Given the AI power demand, the energy crisis of 2022 and new nuclear reactors technology, we can expect this trend to last for years.