(Bloomberg) — An advanced nuclear systems developer backed by Sam Altman more than doubled in value this week as investors rushed to enter companies tied to the energy industry.
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Shares of Oklo Inc., which went public in May after merging with a blank-check company sponsored by OpenAI CEO and serial dealmaker Michael Klein, soared 115% this week to a record $19, 72. The gains come as Amazon.com Inc., billionaire financier Ken Griffin and Alphabet Inc.’s Google. unveiled investments in the next generation of nuclear energy companies.
Oklo shares have been volatile since going public, falling to a low of $5.35 on September 9 before more than tripling in the past month and a half. On Friday, the stock spiked to an intraday high of $20.64, compared to a close of $9.15 just a week ago, pushing its market cap to $2.4 billion.
Santa Clara, California-based Oklo is benefiting from the rise of artificial intelligence and other computing systems that are fueling a boom in energy-hungry data centers and helping to drive electricity demand for the first time in decades.
NuScale Power Corp., a rival to the still privately held and Amazon-backed X-Energy, is up more than 35% this week, while Centrus Energy Corp. has increased by more than 60%.
However, Oklo is still years away from having a functioning reactor, something the company had said would likely be in operation before the end of the decade.
Nevertheless, the share provides a paper windfall for Altman and Klein, as well as for top managers Jacob DeWitte and Caroline Cochran. Altman owns about 3.2 million shares, worth $60 million as of Friday’s trading day, while Klein’s nearly 14 million share stake from the SPAC deal is worth more than $260 million, data compiled by Bloomberg and regulatory filings show. Meanwhile, the husband-and-wife combination of DeWitte and Cochran own approximately 24 million shares worth more than $460 million.
However, the group is not allowed to sell their shares. Under the current terms of the SPAC deal, the four investors cannot sell the more than 40 million combined shares until a three-year phased lock-up expires. But there is a caveat to that limit. If the shares can stay above a predetermined level – from $12 to $16 – for 20 out of 60 trading days, parts of their positions would be available to cash out.
Major venture capital investors who previously served on Oklo’s board could start selling shares in early November, according to a company presentation this summer.
–With help from Matt Turner.
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