New York, January 9, 2026, 17:10 EST — After-hours
- Oklo shares rose nearly 8% after hours after Meta-backed Ohio nuclear campus plan
- Company says Meta can prepay for power to fund early work, including fuel
- DOE deal this week advances Oklo’s radioisotope pilot project under federal program
Oklo Inc. shares rose nearly 8% in after-hours trading on Friday after the company detailed an agreement with Meta Platforms to support a 1.2-gigawatt nuclear power campus in Pike County, Ohio. The stock was up 7.9% at $105.31 after swinging between $97.35 and $120.87 during the session. Barchart.com
The tie-up lands as Big Tech scrambles for round-the-clock electricity to run artificial intelligence-heavy data centers, a demand surge that utilities and grid operators say is testing supply. Meta has said the contracts are meant to feed its Prometheus data center buildout in New Albany, Ohio, a 1-gigawatt cluster expected to come online in 2026, and it did not disclose financial terms. AP News
Meta said it signed 20-year power purchase agreements with Vistra for electricity from three nuclear plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and it will also help develop small modular reactor projects planned by Oklo and TerraPower. Small modular reactors, or SMRs, are smaller designs meant to be built in factory-made pieces; backers say they can cut costs, while critics question whether they can match the scale of big plants, and TerraPower CEO Chris Levesque said the Meta pact supports “rapid deployment.” Meta’s chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan said the package of deals would “make Meta one of the most significant corporate purchasers of nuclear energy” in the United States. Reuters
Oklo said Meta’s agreement gives it a mechanism for the Facebook owner to prepay for power and fund early procurement — including nuclear fuel — as it pushes its Aurora powerhouse design. Pre-construction and site work are slated to start in 2026, with the first phase targeted as early as 2030 and the buildout expanding to 1.2 gigawatts by 2034, it said. “Today, that vision is becoming a reality,” Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte said, while Meta energy chief Urvi Parekh said the project would help “build a resilient and sustainable future for our communities.” Oklo
Earlier this week, Oklo said it signed an Other Transaction Agreement, or OTA, with the U.S. Department of Energy to support a radioisotope pilot facility under the agency’s Reactor Pilot Program. OTAs are a flexible form of federal deal that can move faster than standard contracts, and Oklo said its Atomic Alchemy unit has withdrawn a separate Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) construction permit bid for its Meitner-1 project to focus on the pilot plant. “This OTA establishes a framework for execution and risk reduction,” DeWitte said. Oklo
The rally bled into other nuclear-linked names tied to Meta’s announcement. Vistra shares were up 10.5% after hours, while Meta rose about 1.1%.
But the timetable is long and the hard part is still ahead. Oklo has yet to generate revenue and has not resubmitted its licensing application to the NRC, and MIT researcher Koroush Shirvan said he could not think of another case where a large tech buyer provides reactor fuel. BloombergNEF nuclear analyst Chris Gadomski said the Meta tie-up suggests the sector is finally addressing some of the “fundamental problems.” WIRED
Next up, investors will watch for more detail on how the Meta prepayment structure shows up in filings and for milestones under the DOE authorization track. The Reactor Pilot Program aims to get one or two fast-tracked reactors online by July 4, 2026, the American Nuclear Society reported, a date that could become a marker for how quickly Washington can move new nuclear projects. American Nuclear Society
