Nuclear power can ease 'staggering' AI energy demand: Oklo CEO

The International Energy Agency forecasts that global electricity consumption for the cryptocurrency, data center, and AI sectors could double by 2026. To this end, Oklo aims to create clean energy through fission reactors and has earned the backing of OpenAI founder Sam Altman. Oklo CEO Jake DeWitte joins Catalysts to discuss the company's operations and the energy landscape in the age of artificial intelligence.

DeWitte says Oklo deploys "next-generation" nuclear technology with "huge" potential, pointing to its supposed ability to power the planet for over a billion years. The CEO notes that energy demand is "staggering," as the AI sector is already building on top of the clean energy transition drive.

Regarding the company's operations, DeWitte explains that Oklo designs, owns, and operates its own nuclear plants and sells the power through long-term uptake agreements. He adds that Oklo will work with data centers, sometimes building plants next to the data centers.

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This article was written by Gabriel Roy

Video transcript

A I takes a lot of power.

The International Energy Agency forecasts the global energy demand for crypto and A I will double by 2026.

But where's that energy all gonna come from?

Olo is creating clean energy from fission reactors.

This is where the atom is split in a reactor.

And then it might be what eventually powers A I and crypto.

Well, at least that's what it's banking on.

And it has the backing of Open A I CEO Sam Altman as its chairman, joining us from the New York Stock Exchange.

We've got Jake DeWitt, who is the Olo co founder and CEO.

Jake, thanks so much for taking the time.

First, Just break down for us in a nutshell.

How this happens.

Yeah, uh, thanks for having me.

Uh, I mean, it's pretty cool, like, right, taking a next generation nuclear technology that has a huge amount of promise and potential, Uh, that can literally power the planet for frankly, a billion plus years with proven reserves of materials and technology.

That's been demonstrated.

Something I fell in love with when I was a kid, something that got me really excited to want to work in this space and is what led us to start the company.

Um, you know, 11 years ago, uh, and kind of what we're working towards now is yes.

Sorry, I didn't mean to jump in there, but I'm curious.

When you take a step back, just talk to us just about the size of this opportunity.

Especially when you take into account the energy that's going to be necessary to power a I deployment to power.

These products have yet to come online too.

Yeah.

I mean, it's an, uh it's the The opportunity set is so huge right now.

You've got a couple of things going on, too, right?

We we obviously talked about the A I piece, which is massive and that builds on top of the energy transition drive.

That's happening as we speak.

And it has been going on for a few years.

There's been a lot of excitement about what that looks like as we transition to sort of a cleaner, more sustainable future and electrifying everything from transit to everything.

How we heat our homes.

And now you have this massive pull on the A I side and the amount of energy increase right on a per a I use.

It's still sort of being settled out in a lot of cases, but it's several times larger than just a simple query.

And I think as we get more and more use of a I, it becomes more and more generally like accessible.

It's only going to increase.

Uh, it's such a workforce and sort of productivity multiplier that you need to drive a tonne of energy.

And what we've seen on the data centre side is a massive uptake where they're basically trying to grab all the capacity they possibly can.

And there's a lot of interest in saying Hey, well, what can we bring to generate with us?

So, for example, bringing our reactors building them next to or with where these data centres are being developed or in some cases where we're already building, bringing the data centres to build around us and what's great about that is obviously they'll take the power off that helps us scale and grow forward and deploy more plants, but also open the door to sort of bring it to other markets as well.

But the A I piece is just staggering in the demand.

And frankly, the numbers are kind of eye watering in size, and they just keep keep getting bigger.

And so with that in mind, what is the revenue model?

How how can OK, get towards profitability and and sustain that over time?

Yes, this is a big thing we focused on when we started the company.

It wasn't about sort of the traditional model that nuclear has.

It was about offering something that makes it a lot easier for customers to buy the power they want from nuclear systems.

In other words, the clean, reliable, safe power that nuclear naturally produces.

We just wanted to make it easy for them to buy.

So we design own, operate those plants and sell the power through long term offtake agreements.

Basically, power purchase agreements very similar to what you see a lot of other sort of energy generation technologies, especially renewables, and that allows, for example, a data centre company to then enter into a long term power purchase agreement, buy power from our systems.

We then build the plant, produce the power they buy it over a 20 year period, sometimes more, sometimes less, to power their data centre And then we can add more facilities where we go to support their growth as well.

Now that recurring revenue is fantastic, because then we can finance against it, which is huge.

And on top of that, we have access to the fantastic investment tax credits that exist, all of which are great amplifiers for us, but not entirely needed just to be successful.

But it's a big departure from what nuclear is typically done in terms of being what customers want, but also having the benefits on the business side of those recurring revenues from those power sales.

And that's a massive differentiator Right now.

We stand pretty unique in that space, offering that kind of dynamic.

And Jake, what are you hearing Just in terms of interest and how those discussions that you're having with the A I and data centres how those talks are progressing at this point?

Yeah, so we're excited, you know, Yesterday afternoon we announced a partnership with uh, Wyoming HYPERSCALE Data Centre partner.

Very neat opportunity there as they look at driving high compute density sort of advanced liquid cooling technologies.

One big thing with a I is obviously driving a much higher compute density on a per rack basis at the data centre level, which opens the door for a lot of advanced cooling technologies, which actually opened the door for some interesting integrations, not just on the electric power side we can produce.

So there's some cool things where you can actually use heat from the to help drive cooling.

That sounds weird, but it's actually doable and combined.

Those are some really, you know, promising features of next generation data centres.

So we're excited about that one.

We have more in the works.

The pipeline has been very busy for us.

It feels like there's a lot more demand for power that can be brought online.

So I think we're going to have our hands full for quite a long time.

Just meeting the energy needs there, not to mention all these other opportunities that are coming on the broad energy transition piece.

The data is obviously very, very exciting, but you also have to look at the factory side as we reindustrialize the industrial base in America.

They need power to drive these things including, by the way, making the chips for a I.

As we look at bringing that chip manufacturing back into the US.

So there's just a huge amount of opportunity, especially in where we're we're seeing the industrialization occur, especially in states like Texas, for example, or Ohio.

And so we're pretty excited about what that opportunity looks like and are now very happy to, uh, basically be on the track to try to build as many things as we can as quickly as we can.