Oklo Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Oklo (NYSE:OKLO) reported third-quarter financial results on Friday. The transcript from the company’s third-quarter earnings call has been provided below.

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View the webcast at https://events.q4inc.com/attendee/585679985

Summary

Oklo reported a net loss of $123.3 million for the first nine months of 2026, with a $195.2 million loss from operations, partially offset by $72.4 million in net interest and dividend income.

The company continued to advance its strategic initiatives, including the construction of its Aurora, Idaho project and the development of its Tennessee recycling facility.

Oklo is actively pursuing opportunities in the fuel fabrication and recycling markets, intending to become a leading supplier of advanced fuel forms and potentially serve third-party customers.

The company highlighted significant progress on the Groves 1 project, which was completed in less than a year and serves as a foundational model for future isotope production facilities.

Oklo secured $6.8 million from the DOE to advance recycled metal fuel, supporting its strategy to produce fuel for its reactors and other potential customers.

Oklo’s capital position is strong with $3.1 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities, enabling the company to fund ongoing projects and secure future growth.

Management emphasized the importance of government policies and partnerships in advancing their projects, including collaborations with the DOE and partnerships for manufacturing capacity.

Future outlook includes targeting major reactor component installations, completing equipment installations at A3F, and progressing towards the startup of the Aurora, Idaho powerhouse by 2028-2029.

Full Transcript

OPERATOR

Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to Oklo’s third quarter 2026 financial results and webcast. After today’s prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. I will now hand the conference over to Sam Doan, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Sam, please go ahead.

Sam Doan (Senior Director of Investor Relations)

Thank you, operator and good morning everyone. Welcome to Oklo’s third quarter 2026 earnings and company update call. I’m Sam Doan, Oklo’s Senior Director of Investor Relations. Joining me today are Jake DeWitte, Oklo’s co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, and Craig Bealmear, our Chief Financial Officer. Earlier today we released our third quarter 2026 financial results. Today’s accompanying slide presentation is available on our investor relations section of our website.

Before we begin, I’d like to remind everyone that today’s discussion, including our prepared remarks and the question and answer session that follows, will include forward-looking statements. These statements reflect our current views regarding trends, assumptions, risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed today. We encourage you to review the forward-looking statements disclaimer included in our accompanying presentation.

For a more complete discussion of these risks, please refer to our Form 10-Q for this quarter, our most recent Form 10-K and our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which you can access via our investor relations website. Oklo undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Jake. Jake.

Jacob DeWitte (Co-Founder)

Thanks, Sam. Our ambition is to become one of the largest energy producers on earth and beyond and to make clean power, heat, and critical isotopes abundant and affordable. We believe we have never been better positioned to deliver that vision. We are building Aurora, Idaho and its first-core fuel fabrication capability. We’ve brought Groves 1 into operation. We are securing fuel, bringing critical manufacturing expertise in-house, and arranging capacity for future deployments.

Our balance sheet allows us to commit capital behind that work. We are building for fleets, not just for one. And our ability to simultaneously build a number of smaller-scale projects as we build toward our larger-scale goals gives us meaningful chances to iterate repeatedly and learn from execution. Each project develops people, processes, supplier relationships, and operating experience that we retain and apply across Oklo. This sets us up to win.

Fuel is foundational. Our strategy uses our balance sheet to connect sourcing, fabrication, and recycling to support our own deployments and serve other potential customers. We’re building reactors. We’ve built a reactor, we have fuel secured, we’ve operated a reactor, and we have the capital to keep going. That’s where our confidence comes from, and government policies are creating additional pathways to put it to work. Three developments are particularly relevant to the business we are building.

First, the NRC has finalized a rule that allows applicants to use relevant technical evidence from DOE-authorized reactor projects to support commercial licensing for Oklo. That reinforces the strategic value of advancing Aurora, Idaho under DOE oversight. The safety analyses, testing, and operating experience we develop can support subsequent NRC applications where applicable while meeting the NRC’s requirements. That gives the work we are doing today greater value across future deployments.

We are building an operating reference and a technical foundation that can support a broader Aurora fleet. Second, Groves 2 Forge was selected for the National Reactor Innovation Center’s Nuclear Energy Launchpad that provides access to DOE authorization pathways and specialized nuclear expertise as we advance our integrated isotope production and processing pilot. We’ve already taken Groves 1 through DOE authorization. Groves 2 gives us the opportunity to apply that experience while adding the processing and finishing capabilities needed to deliver isotope products.

Third, DOE’s Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus Initiative is solving for key difficulties in nuclear fuel infrastructure that could meaningfully impact our overall business plan. These campuses could connect fuel fabrication, enrichment, recycling, and waste disposition, potentially alongside reactors and power generation that is closely aligned with our strategy. Scaling nuclear power requires investment across the fuel cycle, and we are developing capabilities to participate across several of those activities.

Together, these developments support the direction we have deliberately taken—building reactors, developing fuel infrastructure, and retaining the experience needed to deploy repeatedly. They are an important part of why we believe we have never been better positioned to execute our vision. The Campus Initiative could be a particularly important opportunity for a recycling business. The Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus priorities closely match what Oklo already plans to build: recycling, fuel fabrication, power plants, and isotope production factories, and now federal policy is enabling these.

There is also a significant potential funding mechanism. The DOE reported more than $50 billion in the Nuclear Waste Fund at fiscal year-end 2025. Congressional action could make funding accessible for eligible nuclear waste management infrastructure within these campuses, including recycling alongside private investment in commercial facilities that could expand opportunities to provide recycling services, fabricate fuel, access recycling feedstock, and sell recovered materials—serving utilities and other reactor operators while strengthening supply for our own fleet.

Our Tennessee project is already part of the Oklo development plan, and additional campus opportunities depend on agreements, funding, and approvals. We are developing capabilities these campuses would need that give us a concrete foundation to pursue a broader commercial market. We are building Oklo to earn revenue across the nuclear lifecycle. Our reactors are designed to sell electricity and heat, with additional opportunities in irradiation services.

Fuel fabrication can serve both our fleet and external customers. Recycling can recover usable fuel and valuable isotopes while providing services to owners of used nuclear fuel. Our isotope business serves specialized markets including healthcare and space. These activities reinforce each other. Our powerhouses create fuel demand. Fabrication and recycling support supply. Engineering, procurement, asset delivery, and operating experience carry across the platform.

We believe this integrated approach is allowing us to control our own destiny by giving us more security over critical deployment requirements and more ways to generate revenues. As the nuclear energy industry scales, we are putting capital to work and assets on the ground. At Aurora, Idaho, construction is advancing into structural work. Alongside it, we are building A3F to fabricate the first core. We are advancing power projects, developing our Tennessee recycling facility, and preparing the Groves 2 Forge. At Groves 1, we have already completed the journey from a greenfield site to an operating reactor. That experience now sits inside Oklo.

These projects are at different stages, but they demonstrate the breadth of what we are executing—reactors, fuel infrastructure, and isotope capabilities developed and informed together and by each other. We are investing with repeated deployment in mind. The teams, suppliers, manufacturing capabilities, asset delivery experience, and operating systems we establish today are intended to support many more assets. This is how we are building a business capable of delivering fleets.

Let’s turn to power, starting with the construction progress at Aurora, Idaho. These photographs show just over seven weeks of progress at Aurora, Idaho in September. You see site and foundation preparation. By early October, administration building foundation work was advancing. By November 4, structural steel was going up. This is our capital translating into physical infrastructure with visible progress from one visit to the next. On a recent visit with a partner, what struck them was how much was happening on the ground and how quickly the site was changing.

These photographs give you a sense of what they saw. Here you can see the reactor building going vertical, excavation, the access tower, and rebar installation. Reactor area excavation is complete, and safety-related rebar work is underway, and vertical steel is being installed. Alongside construction, our teams are advancing procurement, engineering, and the fuel fabrication capability needed for startup. The pace is visible. The coordination behind it is equally important—getting design, suppliers, equipment, and field execution moving together.

We are building our first Aurora powerhouse and developing the construction experience, supplier relationships, and project controls that will inform subsequent deployments. The work underway in Idaho is foundational to the fleet we intend to build. Bringing Aurora, Idaho into operation requires construction, equipment, authorization, and fuel to come together. We are advancing all four in parallel. On construction, excavation at the site is complete and structural and safety-related rebar work is underway. The next steps are continued reactor area construction and equipment installation. On procurement, component requests for proposals have been released and vendors selected. The focus now moves to fabrication, delivery, and integration.

On authorization, DOE has approved our Preliminary Documented Safety Analysis, or PDSA. The PDSA approval for Aurora, Idaho is an important milestone. It is comparable to an NRC construction permit in that it serves as a key regulatory review point for the project’s preliminary design and safety analysis, supporting the advancement of safety-related construction and procurement while helping reduce the risk of significant safety-driven design changes later in development.

The remaining authorization milestones include completion and approval of the Documented Safety Analysis, readiness review, and startup authorization. On fuel, we are developing A3F to fabricate and qualify our first core using our secured EBR-II material that we have already been allocated. We are managing these work streams together with specific execution milestones on the path to startup. We deliberately pursued interconnection applications across potential sites in PJM. Building a fleet requires developing several opportunities in parallel and managing the risks associated with each. Today we have 900 megawatts under active consideration in PJM’s 2026 cluster study. PJM withdrew one of our applications for a potential site in Virginia and FERC ultimately dismissed our complaint challenging that withdrawal. That decision does not affect our Ohio project or our broader announced pipeline, and we are continuing to work constructively with PJM on those other interconnection applications.

The Ohio site continues through the interconnection process, supporting development of our planned campus of up to 1.2 gigawatts. Under our agreement with Meta, we are advancing that work alongside field procurement, site development, and execution planning. This demonstrates the practical value of Oklo pursuing multiple applications. A setback at one location leaves other development opportunities moving forward. Our focus is progressing these opportunities through the studies and agreements required to deliver power.

This is not uncommon in power development efforts. You pick sites, you evaluate them, you pursue them, and often only a few make it. We acquired RMEC and CEI to address specific execution needs, shorten development cycles, strengthen procurement, and improve our ability to manage costs. RMEC is already advancing component specifications, evaluating supplier proposals, and supporting reactor module development at Aurora, Idaho. Its manufacturing expertise helps us assess with other vendors how components should be built and what they should cost. CEI brings decades of sodium systems experience and has built sodium test equipment and pumps for Oklo.

Bringing that expertise inside the company gives our engineering teams direct access to the people designing, manufacturing, and testing these systems. These are world-class capabilities that we now have in-house at Oklo. And bringing these capabilities in-house also supports our deployment schedules and allows us to prioritize and coordinate iterations directly. It also creates an opportunity to retain manufacturing margin within Oklo and lower project costs as we put these capabilities to work.

It is early days, but we are already finding opportunities for their value to extend across powerhouses, fuel fabrication, and recycling. We bought capabilities that support execution today and can serve a growing fleet over time. Alongside our internal capabilities, we are securing external manufacturing capacity for repeated Aurora deployments. Oklo has signed an agreement with US Forged Rings, or USFR, to provide capacity equivalent to 27 Aurora modules across 2030 through 2035, covering large components such as vessels, lids, and support structures. These components require specialized manufacturing and advanced planning. Reserving capacity now gives us a stronger foundation for coordinating future orders and deployment schedules.

The agreement also enables us to include expansion options on additional eligible new capacity. USFR’s planned U.S. manufacturing campus would support domestic production, with deliveries dependent on facility completion and qualification. Individual purchases will be documented in subsequent orders. This relationship complements our broader supplier network. We are using our capital and purchasing commitments to address potential bottlenecks early and give suppliers visibility into our needs.

That is what planning for a fleet looks like—arranging the production capacity today that multiple deployments will require. AI is also accelerating and impacting how our businesses can execute more quickly and efficiently. We are already using AI to accelerate technical work and make our engineering expertise go further. One example is at Groves, where in less than a week, a single engineer used AI to adapt existing Aurora powerhouse multiphysics models into a modeling prototype for Groves. Our team estimates that this compressed months of modeling work into days. Engineering work originally developed for our powerhouses directly accelerated progress in our isotope business, a prime example of our integrated platform at work.

We are also automating repetitive technical documentation. Legacy document conversion that took days can now take minutes, with document control rules encoded in software to automate checks. The broader opportunity is to connect engineering knowledge inside Oklo—that includes our models, technical data, documents, and the people responsible for them. We are working to make those relationships more explicit in our software so teams can trace where information came from, how it changed, and who is responsible for it.

That can reduce time spent finding information, checking consistency, and recreating work while supporting a clearer audit trail. Reusable AI agents and workflows are allowing teams to share those improvements across engineering, coding, documentation, and analysis. Our objective is to reduce the time and cost of delivering technical work and give our people more capacity to solve engineering problems. As we expand, those capabilities can support more projects across Oklo.

Now turning to fuel, which is the foundation for bringing our first powerhouse online and scaling the fleets. We are building the Aurora, Idaho powerhouse and the capability to fuel it in parallel. We have secured access to recovered EBR-II fuel for our first powerhouse. And at the Aurora Fuel Fabrication Facility, or A3F, we are preparing to turn that material into finished fuel assemblies for its first core. Facility equipment installation is underway.

We are targeting our first full fuel assembly in 2027, with fabrication activities coordinated to support Aurora, Idaho’s targeted startup. That coordination matters. Our teams can align fuel specifications, manufacturing processes, qualification, and delivery directly with the reactor’s requirements. We are also exploring opportunities for A3F to serve third-party customers to further support revenue generation from its fabrication capabilities.

The immediate priority is delivering the first core. The manufacturing experience and quality systems we establish can also inform future fuel facilities. We are putting the material, equipment, and manufacturing capability in place alongside the powerhouse that will use the fuel. DOE has selected Oklo for approximately $6.8 million to advance recycled metal fuel with Idaho National Laboratory. This supports a specific part of our strategy—turning material recovered through recycling into fuel for Aurora and other reactors. The project addresses fabrication and qualification together. Its scope includes developing manufacturing methods, fabricating and testing fuel specimens, and using performance modeling to inform recycled fuel qualification.

The objectives are to attain higher fabrication yield and throughput with less process waste, which could impact the economics of supplying recycled fuel to our entire fleet. The work also includes preparing specimens for future irradiation testing at Aurora, Idaho. That connection is important. We are building Aurora, Idaho while developing the fuel capabilities that can support subsequent deployments. Our reactor platform is intended to help generate operating data that informs future fuel development.

We are developing recycling and fabrication capabilities around the needs of the fleet we intend to operate and for additional opportunities to serve other reactor customers. This project advances the technical work needed to make recycled fuel a scalable source of supply for our reactors and other reactors. For third-party revenue, it is important to highlight that our goals with our recycling and fuel fabrication capabilities are to become leading fuel suppliers not just for our reactors but for others’ reactors as well as opening up potential fuel revenue streams from third parties.

Turning to isotopes, starting with what we delivered at Groves 1 and what that experience makes possible. We discussed Groves 1 last quarter, but I want to put the scale of that achievement back into context. The photograph here looks straight down into the reactor’s core structure. We completed substantial construction in 229 days and reached first criticality less than a year after groundbreaking. That is an extraordinary pace for a complex industrial facility.

Groves 1 was built on private land and financed with private capital. Its major systems, components, fuel, and construction services were commercially sourced or manufactured by Oklo. DOE provided rigorous safety oversight in the authorization pathway, while Oklo supplied the capital and led execution. The build cost was approximately $65 million, plus approximately $10 million for commercially sourced fuel. Groves 1 is a low-power test reactor designed to establish experience for future isotope production facilities. We took that project from an open field through construction authorization, commissioning, and startup of a nuclear facility in less than a year. The significance of Groves 1 goes beyond the reactor physics. We built a complete nuclear facility and in doing so created the organization required to deliver and operate nuclear assets. That capability creation was substantial.

We developed a site and completed civil construction. We built the safety basis and engineering documentation required for DOE review, along with the quality assurance and configuration controls needed to manage the project. We established security, radiation protection, emergency preparedness, and maintenance programs. We built the operating organization. That meant hiring, training, and qualifying the people responsible for the facility, writing and testing their procedures, and demonstrating to DOE that the facility and organization were ready to operate safely.

On procurement, we qualified suppliers, negotiated commercial terms, completed factory acceptance testing, and took specialized equipment through installation and commissioning. The project controls behind that work also had to function together—cost, schedule, supplier performance, construction sequencing, and readiness planning. Oklo built these capabilities. We used them and demonstrated them through Groves 1. We now have real construction data, trained operators, operating experience, and DOE authorization experience.

Inside Oklo, the organization required to deliver a nuclear asset has been tested through completed work. Our build-own-and-operate model allows us to retain that experience and apply it across the company. For future isotope facilities, the transfer is most direct. We can reuse and improve the operating programs, supplier relationships, authorization experience, and workforce capabilities established at Groves 1. For Aurora powerhouses, we can adapt the project controls, procurement processes, construction sequencing, and commissioning and readiness practices to a larger and more complex facility. That experience is already informing our approach at Aurora, Idaho.

For fuel fabrication and recycling, we can apply experience with nuclear quality systems, material handling, radiological controls, and security programs. Each project still requires its own engineering, safety analysis, authorizations, and execution plan, and our teams now address these requirements with experience from a completed nuclear deployment. We retain the people and procedures. We retain the cost and schedule data, operating experience, and lessons learned.

Each project gives us an opportunity to improve how we deliver the next one. That meaningfully changes the starting point for future assets. It is how we are building the capability to deploy repeatedly across the business. Groves 2 builds on that foundation with a broader integrated isotope production facility. At Groves 2, we plan to bring radiation processing and product finishing together in one facility. Groves 1 test facility established our reactor capability. Groves 2 adds processing and product finishing facilities in addition to its reactor and irradiation capability. This integrated scope would allow us to produce isotopes, separate and purify them, and prepare finished products for delivery.

Bringing those steps together is intended to shorten turnaround times, reduce costs, and deliver products that meet more of our customers’ needs. We can directly build on experience from Groves 1 in construction, procurement, operations, and completing the DOE authorization process. That gives our team a practical starting point for executing this broader scope. We have already purchased and secured fuel from Promote Home for Groves 2. The project has also been selected for DOE’s Nuclear Energy Launchpad, which will enable us to begin construction through DOE authorization.

We are still finalizing the site location and developing the integrated facility scope. We have never been in a better position to execute. We have the capital and experience needed to advance our work across all businesses. The milestones on this slide show what we intend to accomplish next. At Aurora, Idaho, we are targeting installation of major reactor components. At A3F, we intend to complete equipment installation and fabricate our first fuel assemblies. Recycling, we are targeting pilot facility commissioning in 2027. In isotopes, our targets are to begin construction of Groves 2 and complete our first contracted isotope delivery.

These are ambitious targets. They give our teams clear priorities and investors concrete measures of our progress. Timing will depend on execution and required approvals. Our balance sheet allows us to secure equipment and fuel early, build critical capabilities, and advance multiple projects in parallel. We are putting that capital to work against specific deployment requirements. Groves 1 demonstrated our ability to bring those pieces together and deliver a nuclear facility.

We are applying that experience across the business and building the capabilities required for repeated deployment. And with that, I’ll turn it over to Craig to walk through our financial results and capital position.

Richard Craig Bealmear (Chief Financial Officer)

Thanks, Jake. Through the first nine months of 2026, we continued to advance projects across our business units while maintaining a strong balance sheet. Year to date, net loss through the third quarter was $123.3 million. This included a loss from operations of $195.2 million, partially offset by $72.4 million of net interest and dividend income. Cash used in operating activities was $110.9 million year to date. This includes the net loss of $123.3 million, adjusted primarily for $49.1 million of non-cash stock-based compensation and $36.7 million of net changes in working capital and other adjustments.

We continue to expect cash used in operations to be within our guided range of $120 million to $150 million. Cash used in investing activities was $1.3 billion. That included $965.1 million of net cash used for purchases of marketable securities related to the cash generated from our ATM program. Year to date, capital spend was $280.9 million as we continued planned investments in the deployment of assets across our three businesses. We expect cash used for property, plant and equipment to be within our guided range of $400 million to $500 million.

At September 30, we had $3.1 billion of cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities. This included $1.5 billion of cash and cash equivalents and $1.6 billion of marketable securities. The balance also reflects $2.3 billion raised through our ATM offerings during the first three quarters of the year. We proactively and intentionally raised capital to build the financial capacity to advance projects across our platform. The balance sheet is giving us the financial flexibility to fund planned work across all three business lines as projects progress, including development and construction activities, long-lead equipment purchases, and fuel acquisition for powerhouses and isotopes. It also allows us to make project investments when required and enables commercial flexibility to support execution against our plan milestones.

Before we move to questions, I want to connect our financial position with the progress Jake described and what we are targeting next. We positioned the company to be in execution mode and are taking actions to build assets to generate revenue for each business line. Our balance sheet allows us to secure fuel and equipment early, build critical capabilities, and advance projects in parallel. That capital is being put to work. Groves 1 is complete.

Aurora INL is advancing through construction with its preliminary documented safety analysis approved. And A3F equipment installation is underway. We are also preparing for the projects that follow. Our internal manufacturing capabilities, supplier agreements, and fuel strategy are intended to support repeated deployment. Customer commitments reinforce that work. Meta’s prepayment supports Ohio development and fuel procurement, and developing customer agreements are advancing our isotope business into space applications.

Our model, as well as our M&A strategy, is designed to retain and leverage the operating experience across our power, fuel, and isotope businesses, and we are seeing ways for fuel fabrication and recycling to not only support our fleet but also create opportunities to serve other customers and generate revenue. Our responsibility is to deploy capital with discipline and convert these capabilities into operating assets and customer deliveries. The milestones Jake outlined provide concrete measures of that progress.

Thank you for joining us today. Operator, we are ready for questions.

OPERATOR

We will now begin the question and answer session. Please limit yourself to one question. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one. Again, we ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Joseph Osha with Guggenheim.

Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Joseph Osha (Analyst)

Thanks, everyone. Good morning, and thanks for the update. I’m wondering if we could drill a little bit more into the fuel business. In particular, the potential for third-party revenue. I’m wondering about the timing for that and also what that might look like. Are we thinking, is that all going to be highly enriched fuel, standard enriched fuel, and would that be fed entirely by recycling or procurement from elsewhere? Just more detail there would be great, because it’s—that’s interesting.

Jacob DeWitte (Co-Founder)

And I’ll just chime in and add a little bit more. I think there’s a couple things that kind of add the capabilities here. If you think about what we have at fuel fabrication, to answer your question in a number of ways, it’s really a capability that is, frankly, our goal is to be the leading fuel fabricator for advanced fuel forms. We’re not working on TRISO, obviously, but for what we’re doing with metallic fuel with high-assay enriched or LEU+ oxide fuels for advanced reactors as well as for support for next-generation fuel forms like nitrides and hydrides, things like that, that we will have the capabilities and expertise and capacity to be able to support. That’s work for others, right. And the reason we highlighted those is because we’ve seen interest and we know there’s demand and we know there’s a capacity shortage to make fuel to serve those markets.

And primarily that’s going to focus on stuff that’s above LEU, but there’s going to be the capacity to work with—given that there’s some unique things you can do with some of those fuels with normal low-enriched uranium. When I say above low-enriched uranium, I’m talking about things that live between 5% and all the way up to just under 20. Right. So that spectrum is going to be a pretty strong focus area. And how we look at that is that’s not all capabilities we necessarily have to do.

We have the infrastructure in the building and the facility. Others can come in and rent that space from us, bring their own—like basically, frankly, machinery and equipment to fabricate, or we can partner with them and do it for them, given our expertise. But it creates a diverse set of—frankly, it’s a fuel-fabrication platform, really, that allows for folks to plug and play or to make for others. I think this is where we see a lot of excitement because when we kind of extend this outward, there’s a huge amount of opportunity in fuels—not just supporting what we’re doing, what other fast reactor companies are doing, what other microreactor company concepts are exploring and doing and enabled by advanced fuel forms, what space reactors need—but also even as we look at advanced fuel forms going to next-generation light water reactors or just upgrades at light water reactors, all of that can tie in too, because we have a significant shortage of fuel-fabrication capacity today for the light water fleet.

Looking outward, not something that’s core to us to get into, you know, making the kind of bread and butter of the light water fleet today, but being able to be supportive, be a place for, or even be a direct manufacturer for your advanced fuel forms that can support those is pretty important. And then we can work with, yes, that fresh uranium infrastructure of feed that comes in, but also with the output of what comes from the recycling facility. So it gives us quite a bit of flexibility in terms of being able to make what we need, support fabricating. And again, either we make it and sell those services or sell the fuel to them, or we provide them the space to come do that. So there’s a number of different ways we can offer kind of in the value chain and be able to capture some of that in terms of revenues.

Joseph Osha (Analyst)

And just very quickly, some rough sense of first revenue on this. I know it’s hard, but gotta ask.

Jacob DeWitte (Co-Founder)

I mean, I think it depends on a couple of variables for how this goes. I mean, there’s some potential for early sort of services revenue that could come over the course of sort of the next two years. But the real ramp rate is going to happen after, you know, the facilities are scaled into operation and beyond and other companies’ reactor deployments kind of move forward into those areas. But we’re eagerly looking at ways that that’s evolving. And frankly, as you know, as we develop this capability and people pay more attention to it, we keep sort of seeing new folks showing up with different ideas and concepts.

So it brings a couple different ways for that to come to the table.

Joseph Osha (Analyst)

Thank you.

OPERATOR

Your next question comes from the line of Dimple Gosai with Piper Sandler. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Dimple Gosai (Analyst)

A very good morning, and thanks for the question here, and just a big shout-out. I thought the deck was excellent, so well done on that. Can you please remind us on the DSA submission timing, Jake? And also, once Aurora is operating, does it sell power commercially under DOE authorization or only after it moves to NRC license under this new DOE to NRC rule? Right. And then just on that still, what is the expected timing if you know the transition happens?

Can you remind us of this and, you know, and the off data. Thank you.

Jacob DeWitte (Co-Founder)

Yes. So a couple of variables to that. So the PDSA is a very important milestone, allows us to build, which is why we’re in construction and the depth we are. DSA will happen much closer to construction completion. So we don’t imagine that going forward until 2028 being the thing that makes the sense to do. Then in terms of timing for transition to the NRC, it’s going to depend on our operational milestones and other things we can do. One important thing about Aurora, Idaho is yes, it can sell power, but it can also sell irradiation services. There is no fast irradiation—fast neutron, sorry—irradiation capability really in the Western world operational anymore today. Right. And the US government was going to spend billions of dollars to build a new capability that ultimately didn’t go anywhere because of the lift of that. But that’s what Aurora, Idaho is going to be able to produce and provide for.

So it’s going to be able to monetize that, that support next generation materials and fuel research for everything from federally funded research programs all the way through private investment. I mean, we’ve seen companies in the United States and in Europe—well, all throughout the world—have to invest and spend money to send things to Russia to be tested. And that’s in the past. Obviously those things aren’t open and available anymore. So we’ll have the capability and capacity to support those things here, as well as tremendous potential for isotope production.

So it’s all sort of enhancements with that plant, revenue enhancements with that plant from power sales, which is obviously a foundational piece of it, but also irradiation services where people pay to put things in and get access to the neutrons there, and then also isotope production. And so it’s a pretty cool sort of three-pronged approach for how that can look. A lot of those can be done—like those other ones can be done largely, like isotopes and irradiation services can largely be done to varying degrees under DOE authorization, and so can power sales under certain use cases. But ultimately it allows us to have a much more unconstrained point of operations when we convert that over to the NRC and give us a lot more flexibility. So that’s kind of the why and the timing of that. But one of the things, for example, that’s nested pretty significantly into the executive orders from May 2025 was the ability to sell power to the data centers under DOE authorization.

So in other words, sell power to a data center offtaker directly under DOE authorization. So, you know, that is another pathway that could be something that makes sense to do under that sort of trajectory. But again, having the flexibility from the NRC conversion and given the confidence we see in the time we’ve spent with the NRC to date—you know, let’s not forget that about a year and a half ago we completed a readiness review preparing to submit the application before accelerated pathways that came from DOE opened up.

So, you know, we’re excited to be able to actually go through that effort. And we see the NRC’s preparedness to be able to take an application and move it forward to be converted into an NRC space. So ultimately that’s the end state we’ll land up. But there’s a number of things you can do before that happens. Have a pretty wide degree of flexibility.

Richard Craig Bealmear (Chief Financial Officer)

And then, Dimple, you know, in terms of power sales, you know, under the DOE permit, we can sell power to the labs, which we’ve always seen that as being the first initial customer for power coming out of the powerhouse. And then we will transition to an NRC permit. I think the good news is it does really feel like DOE and NRC are working collaboratively to find ways to streamline that process because they’re, I think, rebuilding a streamlined process.

It’s hard to put a definitive timeline on it, but it definitely feels like, you know, an accelerator. And I’ll make sure that Sam and the team get the thank you on the deck because they did all the hard work.

Dimple Gosai (Analyst)

Thank you.

OPERATOR

Your next question comes from the line of George Jeannariguez with Canaccord Genuity. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

George Jeannariguez (Analyst)

Hi everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. My question’s on plutonium. What’s your current timeline and potential expected cost structure for receiving some of the government-held surplus? Thank you.

Jacob DeWitte (Co-Founder)

Yeah, I think we see—so there’s a couple variables developing there. We continue to make progress through sort of the DOE’s programs and engagement to set the stage for that. I think what we’re expecting is a tranching of material from different sources and sort of availability and, quote-unquote, manufacturability more directly. So some of it might need some work before it becomes manufacturable. And so the point is to work with stuff that’s more readily available.

And so that’s continuing to progress. We’re eager and excited to see that continue, and we’re obviously very excited about the traction at that point. Unfortunately, I think the timeline for what that’s going to look like, we expect to become a lot clearer in the next few months in terms of when that material is going to be able to come out and move available or move forward on that. But we’re hopeful and optimistic there’ll be various interim milestones along the steps there over the course of the next few months for that material to release into being able to fabricate.

The questions then about, like, cost structure—I mean, in general, again, one of these things that is somewhat dependent on programmatic structures and contours, but generally inclined to being provided to us as-is with no specific fee or cost. But then the cost to fabricate is obviously burdened by the recipient. So that’s kind of the thing. So it provides a pretty attractive, you know, cost of feedstock that’s basically zero, but then obviously has to be fabricated and go into fuel from there.

George Jeannariguez (Analyst)

Thank you.

OPERATOR

Your next question comes from the line of Mark Bianchi with TD Cowen. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Mark Bianchi (Analyst)

Hey, thank you. I wanted to ask about the Ohio project and Meta there. Is the agreement with Meta binding to build the reactor, and if not, when would you get to that point and maybe walk us through some of the milestones that would need to occur to get there?

Jacob DeWitte (Co-Founder)

Yeah, so it’s not binding as is to build the reactor. A little bit natural for a project like this and especially one where Meta is then to help drive forward a kind of a new model that’s constructive to nuclear here. Because let’s just remember there really is no example for this from, like, a nuclear sort of developer-operator model to bring it forward. But obviously it was attractive to them to select that and that’s why they’ve done—kind of progresses through various stages to move through the site development, the long-lead procurement like fuel, and also into interconnection and then into full execution.

But it’s a relational buildup. And what’s important about that for us too is that brought them to bring capital at the beginning to help with that, to show a path then to continue scale and execute and illuminate the clear path to when delivery is going to be. And then also the costs. And when I say the cost, I just don’t mean the Oklahoma cost, but the actual prevailing cost of power too, and sort of have those things converge in a constructive way so it works for everybody.

But with the recognition that, you know, generally when you look at kind of how I think the strategies went into what they did to put these things together in this program together, it was about finding the partners to help advance this because they see the technology as being significantly enabling to them. And instead of just being a purely transactional partner, they want to be a development partner as well in ways that also make sense for us.

And so finding the way to do that was what we were pretty excited about landing in with this deal. But it has a very clear trajectory, right, from line of sight to execution to actually turning power plants on. When you look at a scarce market and when you look at the timelines of power delivery and where we are largely at the lead of, or in the near front of, that pack from nuclear-generated electrons—especially advanced nuclear-generated electrons—that gets them pretty interested and excited, I think.

And that’s, you know, part of why they selected us on that process to develop into this. So it’s kind of a buildup along a normal development project before it executes into that stage. And we like that because, again, it brings them to the table with us as a partner and not just as kind of a transactional customer.

Richard Craig Bealmear (Chief Financial Officer)

Mark, there are some binding elements to it, such as, you know, they provided some capital that gives them reservation capacity, and then we have milestones in terms of doing things with that capital, with probably the first kind of big milestone around that being the securing of fuel. And we are working on that process as we speak. And then there’ll be other milestones further down the line as we progress the project.

Mark Bianchi (Analyst)

Great, thanks so much guys. I’ll turn it back.

OPERATOR

Your next question comes from Brian Lee with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Brian Lee (Analyst)

Hey guys, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. Maybe just a big-picture one. I know it’s early days, but we obviously had a bit of a pivot in the political landscape here this week. And then you had a lot of these sort of state-level moratoriums starting to pop up and become pretty meaningful points of debate for data center development going forward. So I guess in that context a lot of folks kind of assume you guys are mostly going to be focused on data center BPM-type of applications with the Aurora powerhouse.

But given the 75 megawatt configuration, it seems like you guys would be better suited than some of your larger-scale SMR peers—larger scale in terms of their capacity—to go after other types of applications, non–data center related. Have you guys given any thought to sort of a shift in go-to-market or at least allocating more of a push to non–data center opportunities going forward, just in the context of all that’s going on?

Jacob DeWitte (Co-Founder)

Yeah, I think to get into it too, I mean one of the things that’s—I mean, yes, the answer is yes. And that was always kind of a posture we had. Obviously data centers are, you know, well-heeled, fast-moving, needing a lot of power and consuming it in chunks. And now we see maybe some various dynamics evolving. I do think that you’re going to see, you know, continued concentration of data centers in states that are supportive of this because there are states that are going to be supportive and interested in having these things and that’s just going to further pull demand into some different locations.

And to be honest, our posture gives us flexibility to be responsive to that. But when you look at what’s happening, just broadly speaking, I think I always think of three major vectors around what’s been driving electric demand and why we see a lot of upward price pressures are largely influenced by demand. Obviously data centers are a flagship piece of that. But let’s not forget that for the last, you know, 10, 15 years we’ve seen large shifts towards electrification in many, many ways. And that is putting load on the grid, albeit maybe in less gigantic and noticeable chunks than data centers, but it is.

Add to that significant efforts around reindustrialization, which is obviously something that supports jobs in America and is quite bipartisan in nature. Looking at policies of the last several administrations, you know, we in many ways, from an energy policy perspective, we as a country saw a shift of, you know, those kind of baseload-consuming industries and assets and factories being shuttered and moved overseas. Well, when they come back, they need that kind of power again.

And so we see this manifesting even in things we’ve done at states. When we’ve been looking at going to states and siting there, they’re seeing that when they used to be able to go and try to attract new factories or new manufacturing presences coming to their states, power was taken for granted that it was available. And now they’re realizing that’s like a huge either weakness or vulnerability—or maybe they have a little bit of strength—but most of them don’t have enough at all.

And so we find that is going to be, I think, a pretty sizable driver. So I think we’re pretty confident just in general, and like you said, our sizing and our posturing gives us flexibility to do that. But I think the other thing that’s important is, you know, nuclear has a strong bipartisan level of support. I think one thing we’re going to see probably is a focus on also moving and heavily incentivizing, in the ways that are possible, clean power generation to come in and support, whether it be for data center generation or just new generation as a whole.

In light of, you know, the election results, nuclear is really well positioned to do that. So, you know, I feel pretty optimistic that, you know, either the policy shifts that are going to be moving—if, you know, towards maybe, you know, just the continued effort of saying bring your own power if you’re going to build here—as well as policies that are trying to attract, you know, continue to try to attract manufacturing jobs in the states, they’re going to need power production and nuclear is just incredibly well suited to do that.

And our positioning—our size range—is very ideal for that too. It’s not too small at the megawatt scale for some of that to matter, and it’s not so big that you can’t sort of serve either an industrial facility or an industrial park. Instead, it’s pretty well suited to serve in that sweet spot. And I think.

Richard Craig Bealmear (Chief Financial Officer)

And Brian, I would just also point out, you know, the ADVANCE Act, you know, which was great for our sector and our business, came under the prior—under the Biden administration. You know, I attended the U.S. Governors Conference and there were as many Democrat as there were Republican governors who wanted to talk to Oklo. So I think that demand for the clean, affordable, reliable power is—I don’t think that demand profile is going away. And we definitely have not had—you know, the elections happened, but I didn’t have our corporate development team saying suddenly customers are calling, saying they’re not interested.

Which is why we’re so focused on putting assets on the ground.

Brian Lee (Analyst)

That’s great. I appreciate all the color, guys. Thanks.

OPERATOR

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Nate Pendleton with Texas Capital Bank. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Nate Pendleton (Analyst)

Good morning and congrats on the continued progress. I wanted to touch on the ARPA-E funding for recycled fuel on slide 18. How much of the EPR2 fuel data carries over to recycled fuel, given the residual lanthanides and actinides in the recycled fuel, and I guess what still has to be proven through testing? Or is this more around process optimization?

Jacob DeWitte (Co-Founder)

Yeah, I mean, this program is largely around process optimization as well as supporting fuel qualification in different ways. But, you know, part of what we’re approaching is: there is data from irradiated—you know, we as a country have irradiated transuranic-bearing fuels in a number of different reactors and platforms to generate data that is directly applicable and extendable to use for qualifying transuranic-bearing fuels for full kind of commercial usage.

That said, we do look to augment and enhance that with the fact that we’ll have the Aurora plant running and we’ll be able to use that to actually irradiate, you know, test pins and lead test assemblies of transuranic-bearing fuel to, I think, fully characterize—basically, quote-unquote—qualify that out for our usage. You know, there’s not really such a thing formally as fuel qualification—people like to use it as a colloquial term to describe it—but generate enough data so that we have enough confidence for our own use as well as enough data and confidence to support its behavior, in understanding its kind of failure modes and effects, to justify its use to the regulator as well. So I think at the end of the day, that’s what we see the intent and mission is.

Broadly speaking, this is a really important step in that. I think what’s also nested in there that’s pretty exciting is support for other programs, not just ours, of using transuranic material, which is great for us because the recycling facility will produce transuranic material. So it’s clearly showing that there’s interest in a market emerging for customers to want that material, given that it has some huge benefits and advantages. So it’s pretty exciting to see what that’s looking like across the board.

Nate Pendleton (Analyst)

Got it. Thanks for taking my question.

OPERATOR

Your next question comes from the line of Derek Soderbergh with Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Derek Soderbergh (Analyst)

Yeah, hey, guys. So just regarding USFR, I was curious if you could talk about your expected capital commitment there, if there’s anything, and then what sort of component volumes are contemplated in the agreement. And then finally, just any additional color on why you’re moving forward with USFR over maybe some other more established steel companies? Thanks, guys.

Jacob DeWitte (Co-Founder)

Yeah, I mean, I think we work with a number of partners here, so, you know, we’re excited about and feel confident about how we kind of approach having offtake. I think we’re very—I’m sorry, not offtake—supply for what we need to do to deliver. But I think at the end of the day, what we saw here was a group that has the ability to stand up and support some large capacity that we expect to be able to grow into and would like to have that decongest some of the backlog in other areas.

Again, because of our pace and where we’re at, especially the Aurora project, we feel very good about what we need in the near term. The question, though, is as that scales into the longer term, and that’s where we see new entrants are needed, because the capacity is just not going to be there. And so that’s why we’re going to be able to be supportive and drive that forward.

Richard Craig Bealmear (Chief Financial Officer)

And at the moment, it’s an initial small investment, and then it gives us, you know, reservation and capacity that as they scale up, then we can access that capacity. But that would be commitment for procurement that we would be doing as we scale up the fleet.

Derek Soderbergh (Analyst)

Perfect, thank you.

OPERATOR

Next question comes from the line of Ryan Pfingst with B. Riley. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Ryan Pfingst (Analyst at B. Riley)

Hey guys, thanks for taking the question. What are some of the remaining items that we should be thinking about coming next on the supply chain or procurement and manufacturing for both Aurora INL and then the longer-term fleet deployment strategy?

Jacob DeWitte (Co-Founder)

I think so. I think in general what we look at across the board there—and definitely, Greg, chime in on this—but I think as we see kind of the stack of what we need to do to support this is we’re trying to solve to build, obviously, what we need to do for one. There are sometimes solutions you find for that that are important for time, right. And we’ve been working really aggressively for time optimization to build that quickly. Sometimes some of the suppliers, providers don’t necessarily have the scale to do beyond one at the rates we expect to go to.

So you kind of want to balance and work with that in a number of ways and also balance that with having, you know, not having just a single supplier risk and work with a number of suppliers while then also evaluating what is it that we want to bring in-house and make ourselves. And I think a view we’ve long had is: you know, it’s great to theoretically talk about, oh, we do everything in-house, we verticalize every single thing. That’s a great thing to do when you have an update and an understanding of what you actually need and want to do based on having built a few of these things, rather than doing it all up front, because you’re inevitably going to have to go back and retool and there’s a lot of capital needed to do that and all those kinds of things.

So finding that right balance is something of intentional focus for us. That’s why you build the one to go to many and have that kind of vector in mind. And so as we think about how that works, we’ve been fortunate to bring in some fantastic team on procurement and on supply chain, as well as internally for manufacturing capabilities. And that’s kind of dictated why we’ve gone out and built out capabilities in-house. We’ve acquired capabilities like RMEC to really expand the things that we need to build ourselves, but also find those suppliers that can actually meet what we need to do—what we’re trying to do here.

I don’t know, Craig, do you want to add anything on that?

Richard Craig Bealmear (Chief Financial Officer)

Well, I would say in terms of INL, you know, I meet with Rob Potowski and our procurement team every other week. And we’ve got the procurement plan for INL, it’s in place and we are executing against it. And we knew what the critical path items were and we acquired accordingly. But I think that, Jake, in terms of what’s next, we’re already starting to work with, queue it on, what can we do differently and what will we do differently for subsequent powerhouse deployments; how might we use, to Jake’s point, RMAC and other things that we brought in-house. And then we’ll start working on that particular procurement strategy then. And I won’t name the vendor, but we actually had one of our key suppliers visiting us this week down at Groves.

And the nature of those conversations was more about what more can we do together. So I think it’s great that we’ve got partnership with our key suppliers and it’s a twofold conversation. Part one is working on the deployment of the assets that are going on the ground today. But the second part of the conversation is what’s next?

OPERATOR

Your next question comes from the line of Jeffrey Campbell with Seaport Research Partners. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Jeffrey Campbell (Analyst)

Thanks for taking my question. Just to shift gears a little bit over to Groves 2, I was wondering if you’re currently working with any drug industry participants to refine your view of the isotopes that might be in greatest and when the facility is capable of producing product. Thanks.

Richard Craig Bealmear (Chief Financial Officer)

So, Jeff, I think the short answer to that question is yes. And Ray Wang and the team, I think Groves 2 is kind of interesting because it’s got two access points. As we’re working on getting ready to start that project, one is clearly, where’s it going to go? How do we leverage the learnings from Groves 1? It will be a larger asset. It will be a commercial asset. But the other bit is the conversations we’re having with pharma and other customers so that we make sure that the isotopes we intend to produce can meet their needs.

And that’s probably where Ray and his team spend a good chunk of their time at the moment.

Jacob DeWitte (Co-Founder)

Fully echo that. That’s the great thing about this, it’s a versatile platform. We’ve coupled that with the demonstration of execution of Groves 1, and it gives us the ability to work with a number of different folks. I think the thing I see excitedly on the radioisotope side is there’s kind of a strategy that’s approaching, right? One is having the ability to produce for what the markets want and need in the very, in the kind of immediate term that’s known.

And there’s a few clear isotope examples for that. But then there’s a spectrum of others — and that was always kind of the intent of the reactor platform here as being versatile in its production — that are much more in the exploratory stages. One thing that I think we’ve been observing is the capabilities of the application of computational biology to explore the ligands, to explore the different molecular carriers of these isotopes has been pretty significantly underexplored — frankly, radically underexplored. And now with AI, it’s just not really being done because there wasn’t a lot of interest to say, well, let’s spend those resources looking at things to carry isotopes that we just can’t buy.

So why would we do that? So they don’t. Our view is now you can start to change that considerably and then you open up a really awesome sort of co-development opportunity where, when you think about, okay, from the pharmaceutical side as they’re starting to apply computational biology, unlocking massively new, well, expanded capabilities for different ligands and carriers of different radioisotopes, now we can work with them closely at the developmental stages and the exploratory stages, the fundamental research stages.

We can work with them and say, hey, what do you need? Okay, in these cases we can make these, here they are. And then from there you’ve been able to start producing the quantities needed to support that early-stage R&D that can then maybe translate into and propagate all the way out to something that’s in full production. But then we’ll have the capability to actually have that flexibility to provide across a number of use cases, and then that opens up the door for many more. So it’s that kind of two-pronged approach of go after what’s clear now. But we’ve got extra neutrons floating around that we’re not going to always need to use for producing things like Lutetium-177 or other similar isotopes that are kind of flagship isotopes at the moment, but they can be used to start making these exploratory quantities of others.

And then hopefully that’s going to be a huge boon when that helps support and drive further investments applying AI and computational biology to explore and develop these carrier molecules, and then the use of other isotopes that aren’t being produced at all today that might be transformative in their capability at the therapeutic level. All of a sudden we can start to bring those forward. It’s super exciting to think about what this all looks like, but you need that capability and that platform, and it doesn’t exist.

And that we’re excited to be building on.

Jeffrey Campbell (Analyst)

Thank you.

OPERATOR

Your next question comes from the line of Christopher Souther with Truist Securities. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Christopher Souther (Analyst)

Good morning. Thanks for just wanting to follow up Supply Chain and us.

Jacob DeWitte (Co-Founder)

Chris, you’re breaking up. We’re not getting the question, I don’t think.

OPERATOR

I think we should move on and then maybe we can bring Chris back, try again. Your next question comes from the line of Seth Basham with Wedbush Securities. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Seth Basham (Analyst)

Thanks a lot. Good morning and thanks for taking my question. My question is regarding the Virginia application that the PJM rejected. And if you wouldn’t mind just recapping why it was rejected. And does that reasoning apply to any of your other interconnection requests, including Ohio?

Jacob DeWitte (Co-Founder)

Yeah, I think just to add a little color on that, I mean, we’re active in engagement on, I believe, 900 megawatts of development capacity in Ohio. Where does that affect our plans in Ohio? I was really focused on some other opportunities developing that. We’re still continuing to explore and look at ways it can develop and advance in different or alternative pathways. It’s a very interesting time, because I think one of the things that’s been observed, broadly speaking, has been a general realization that there’s need to continue to enhance the interconnection process.

It’s obviously been a focus of priority and policy for the current administration and for various state leaders. And it’s a focus of bipartisan interest to make sure that we can get power plants online. And one of the things that some of these interconnection processes struggle with is novelty. Novelty is key to going to the future. And that was one of the things that stood out about this — we were bringing in a mix of fuel sources and their processes just didn’t know how to handle it. And the kind of default is, we don’t know what to do right now, but we’re going to try to figure it out to go somewhere maybe in the future in a different way.

And I think as you look across the spectrum as an example set of those where folks are applying innovatively to that, obviously there are things that went through and carried along as anticipated, which is great. We continue to develop those in Ohio. We also remain excited about some of these future other opportunities just given their proximity to where we see very attractive and exciting markets developing.

Richard Craig Bealmear (Chief Financial Officer)

Yeah, and, you know, it was one application. It was rejected for technical reasons. We actually don’t agree with the technical reasons for why it was rejected, but we’ve got to play the ball where it lies. But I actually think it just reinforces the strategy we had to have more than one application. So we’re moving forward from there. But no read across to Ohio.

Seth Basham (Analyst)

Got it. And just as a follow up on Ohio itself, what’s the expected timeline for that application?

Richard Craig Bealmear (Chief Financial Officer)

You know, we’re working through the PJM process, which I think is going to take place over the next 24 months. But I always think there are things you manage, things you influence, and things are the environment. And definitely I think the PJM process is one more that we influence than manage.

Jacob DeWitte (Co-Founder)

Yeah, I’ll just say, I mean, that was part of this last wave and it’s continuing to kind of progress through. So it’s not for a new set. It’s one that came through for the last wave and it’s continuing to go forward.

Seth Basham (Analyst)

Got it. Thank you.

OPERATOR

Your next question comes from the line of Samir Ghoshy with HC Wainwright. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Samir Ghoshy (Analyst)

Good morning, Jake, Greg. Thanks for taking my questions. Congrats on the progress. Just a quick question on the relationship with Centrus and was there any progress, or what is the next nine to 12 months plan of action on that front?

Jacob DeWitte (Co-Founder)

Yeah, I think what we see is we continue to be quite engaged with them and with various enrichment partners to continue to develop the market there. We’re in a great position given we have the projects we have, given, for example, like Craig pointed out again, Metis prepayment — we’re continuing to advance these and develop those opportunities. I feel if you ask me what kept me up the most at night two years ago, fuel and the responsiveness in the enrichment markets was going to be one of the biggest ones.

Not because, look, we have fuel for a first plant, that’s great, but what I was worrying about was what does it look like to get beyond that. And I feel today more confident than I’ve ever felt about what’s happening in the enrichment markets where you’ve had such a stagnant industry for so long now being spurred to life for so many reasons that you’re seeing the incumbents and the legacy players stepping up and executing in exciting ways. You see new entrants coming forward. So I’m quite excited about what’s happening there. But again, we continue to have a deep relationship with Centrus that goes way back and we continue to advance that forward while also continuing to help be supportive of other players in the ecosystem.

Because our view is it’s a really important space that’s going to have a lot of growth and room ahead of it. We’re facing a lot of demand growth there, not just for new advanced reactors, but for sustaining the existing plants because we’re looking at an import ban and cliff hitting pretty hard next year. Add to that also just growth and upgrades. It’s an exciting time in the space to be supportive and helping mobilize that while also being at the front of the lines, so to speak.

Richard Craig Bealmear (Chief Financial Officer)

And, Samir, it’s really amazing to me that three years on, in my time in Oklo, this time three years ago, we would have predominantly been talking about regulatory risk and fuel supply risk. And I think we’re doing things to de-risk those every day. And it feels like we’ve got momentum on all fronts and, at the risk of getting in trouble, you know, Jake now has a 2-year-old and a newborn, so there are other things keeping him up at night.

OPERATOR

Your next question comes from the line of Eric Stein with Craig-Hallum. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Eric Stein (Analyst)

Hey everyone. Thanks for sneaking me in here at the end. Just curious. You talked about kind of your optionality in PJM, you know, given that one situation. And it just makes me curious, you know, if you have other agreements and certainly you’re pursuing other agreements like the Meta agreement, do you anticipate that those agreements would be site specific? Would there be some flexibility if you ran into issues like you did in that one area, you know, that someone might sign an agreement for just X amount of power rather than power at that specific location?

Jacob DeWitte (Co-Founder)

Yeah, I think what we’re finding is the biggest interest is broadly in power. And I think what we’ve seen and what we’ve observed is a very interesting set of dynamics where you have a steady uptick and, obviously, basically a steady expansion of interest in where data centers are going to everywhere they can find power. And I think that’s the trend line that we’re tracking pretty heavily is, you know, they went from being obviously in the core corridor states to now looking at sort of, hey, wherever there’s power, that’s where we’re going to go.

And I think that’s going to play out then to the next stage, which is for new power development, not just from existing assets, but for new power development going to go to where that is. And that’s somewhat co-iterative because, obviously, you have some flexibility to define where that power is rather than if you’re trying to go buy it from an existing plant that’s already built and operating. But in this case, now there’s this dynamic where it’s like, hey, Oklo, where can you put power?

Or it’s more like then we respond and say, hey, these are the places we’re going and this is the capacity we either do have or don’t have in those areas. And then they can be like, okay, yeah, great, these ones make sense or these ones don’t. And then we can use that to make sure we’re focused on the areas we want to go, which gives us a lot of power and flexibility. Again, I think what we’re seeing is traction, obviously, with the sites we have. It’s not abnormal for power development to go through—you pick a number of sites because that’s what we see the market moving us to, to say we’re going to develop these forward. Some drop off for various reasons and it kind of winnows down to a few and you just kind of repeat and build that muscle and keep going with that cycle to ultimately find the right places where you’re building and scaling and finding customers too.

But at this point I feel like we’re entering more and more of a Field of Dreams stage, which is build it and they will come. I mean, that’s not universally true everywhere, but it’s a lot more supportive of that, broadly speaking, across the United States. And, for example, one of the things that I think I’m particularly excited about is when you think about these nuclear life cycle innovation campuses, as you think of what those look like you start anchoring fuel production infrastructure. You have government policy supporting that in these areas, and then you’re building power plants naturally nearby those. You start creating these campuses that have the power capacity. And we’re finding some of the data center folks starting to be like, hey, okay, this is very interesting.

And you think of the six states that are in the sort of final stages now, I think it’s going to be an example of that kind of build-it-and-they-will-come mindset that’s going to start aggregating more interest that way. Couple that then as well with just a broadly supportive price environment too. It gives us a lot more flexibility, which is nice. And I’ll just be clear that part of what helped us with driving the partnership with Meta was we saw the opportunity in Ohio and we went to it. And we didn’t go there asking customers, who wants this? We had enough knowledge of discussions with customers that that was a good place to go. But having that sort of in the hopper, so to speak, really helped accelerate the interest from Meta. And I think we see similar dynamics to be evolving in other places.

So informed by customer interest, but increasingly flexible to go where it makes sense to go and then look at others coming to us in cases now, obviously, in light of sort of recent trends, that this ties also to a different dynamic where this will also start, I think, attracting other industrial development and infrastructure, which I think is attractive for diversifying the customer base, but also kind of moves to places that are going to be broadly just more supportive of development and folks coming in to anchor into those, because then kind of the bring-your-own new power is being taken care of as part of the development aspects to this.

So it’s going to be interesting in those areas. But our model is very well suited for that because of the flexibility we can have, you know, and the ability to. And I think we’ll see more of this as we build out more power campuses in places like Ohio that will be contracting through virtual PPAs. And so it’s great that that’s a construct that already exists that we can leverage.

Eric Stein (Analyst)

Okay, thank you.

OPERATOR

Your next question comes from the line of Christopher Souther with Truist Securities. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Christopher Souther (Analyst)

Hey, guys. Sorry about before. Is this better?

Sam Doan (Senior Director of Investor Relations)

Much better. Sorry we had to bounce you.

Christopher Souther (Analyst)

No, no, that’s all right. You’re quite right to bounce me there. Maybe just on the supply chain for INL versus the fleet, Jake, you kind of, you know, discussed that a little bit. You guys have talked about working with Kiewit to kind of formalize, you know, portfolio deployment. Can you talk about how the USFR capacity reservation, it seems to imply about 2 gigawatts for, you know, by 2035. Like what are the other long-lead items for, you know, that 2030 to 2035 that you need to reserve over the next year or two?

And then can you give us a sense like what percent of the supply chain for INL is finalized versus the percent of the, you know, planned fleet supply chain that you guys have already formalized here? Thanks.

Jacob DeWitte (Co-Founder)

Yeah, I mean, I think right now for the Aurora, Idaho plant, I mean we’re pretty, you know, done. We’re, yeah, we’re pretty much done. I think we’re in a good spot with that. We’re obviously building and integrating and all that’s kind of along, and a lot of that is going to be carryover to what’s next for where we go beyond it. I think there’s a few cases where we’re looking at expanded capacity that exceed what was out there or offer better opportunities but wasn’t quite there, and USFR is an example of that.

But, for example, obviously the partnerships we formed with Siemens go long lasting and rooted into many plants at scale and that’s awesome. Fuel—we talked about Centrus—other componentry, you know, our partnerships that we’ve been able to develop to not just support what we have here but go beyond it. And then I think, you know, it’s one of those things that we’re looking at. You know, the kind of some of the major lifts are obviously fuel, vessel, pumps, certain things in the instrumentation and control stack, steam turbine generators, and the heat exchangers and steam generators.

So I think as we look at what we’ve done with Aurora, I know a lot of that has direct carryover beyond, and then we continue to develop for having also, not optionality, but, flex—sorry—what’s the planned sort of extra capacity for what’s beyond that, just given what we expect to see happening and where we see the markets moving and the customer demand that we keep seeing coming in. So I think that’s where we look at solving kind of at scale through those.

OPERATOR

Your next question comes from the line of Drew Scott with Needham. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Drew Scott (Analyst)

Hey, thanks for taking my question. I read in the 10-Q that it says Aurora INL comes online 2028–2029. Should we read that as a modest push out to 2029? If so, I guess, why?

Jacob DeWitte (Co-Founder)

Oh, I think, yeah. So, I mean, Aurora. As we look at Aurora, Idaho’s kind of timing for full commissioning and startup, one of the things we’ve learned from Groves is the variables that come into play to manage, sort of, you know, things that are going to pop and kind of come up to mitigate through, and the potentiality for, you know, equipment recalibration and testing and putting back in. And as we look at kind of the schedules and the stack of when everything comes and how all that looks, those are pretty important variables to make sure we kind of have the right buffer and bandwidth to support.

And that’s in a direct, you know, application of things you learn from the Groves experience. And we’re already tying some of those in. Electrical noise management is a huge thing in nuclear plants. It’s one of those things that’s kind of like, everyone kind of knows it and then you kind of—you don’t forget it. But each site is so different for so many reasons, based on what the building is and where steel is, what structures you use and where you did the grounding and soil and the atmospherics and the time of year when you’re doing it.

There’s so many variables. And so having that extra capacity, that extra flexibility is critically important. And you think about why—when you’re detecting single neutrons, which is literally what you’re able to do more or less, right, you’re detecting single nuclear reactions as part of some of these neutron monitoring systems. How that works is you have this charge applied in a detector and it detects the energy basically imparted from a nuclear reaction. Sometimes it’s a fission event, depending on the detector technology, but sometimes they use small amounts of uranium in there that fission when the neutron hits, and that imparts energy and it deflects that field and you measure that perturbation.

That’s a really small number. And so you have to have really strong noise insulation and isolation. And so if you have issues, you have to be able to root those things out. You have to be able to calibrate. Well, all that stuff takes quite a bit of time. And at scale with Aurora, some of those things, you can only do so much before the whole plant’s put together, because the whole system is obviously coupled. So it’s just having the flexibility to do that while also allowing for what the firm finals are for, things we’re obviously bringing in and what we’re stacking up to have everything installed by. But I think that’s one of the longest leads—it’s really tied over to the variables around the instrumentation side and the full-plant integration and commissioning and startup based on what we saw and learned from Groves. So, you know, we’re doing some things that can pull some of that schedule with certainty over to the left.

We’ve seen some wins there. But based on what we know and what we’ve learned—which is why we do these things—that’s kind of how we see the buffer going with stacking the time for all the parts coming in, installing, and then doing everything you need to do to make sure everything’s commissioned and run up ideally. Hopefully, you know, we’re able to get in front of some of those things and we can maybe pull even more to the left. But at the end of the day, want to have that buffer in there because time is going to take time to do all this stuff.

I know that sounds like a really funny thing to say, but this is why we did Groves 1—it’s to allow us to understand these things. Now we try to get in front of it, now we try to manage what we can there. But some of this stuff can only really be done when you’ve fully assembled and built everything. There’s some things you can do to kick it down and knock it down a little before, but that’s stuff you got to do. And that’s one example. There’s others too, but that’s kind of a prevailing example.

Sorry, let me just—I’ll just—sorry, I’ll just add a little more. I think one thing that’s important about that is, given the nature of the system too and its ability to produce, you know, radiation services would be important for characterizing and developing out next-generation fuels, materials for us, for others. Given its capabilities for isotopes, some of the calibrations we want to do and need to do to enable those benefits and those revenues can be quite attractive in some ways, not to mention just enduring kind of national asset value is important to get that stuff buttoned up kind of above and beyond so that we’re really well positioned to take advantage of the incredible performance that this system will have.

So that’s part of where also that comes to bear—is making sure we do it in those ways and not just a lens towards, kind of, the—you know—going to power generation but also supporting the other aspects, and being well positioned with that there, and also being a training platform that informs everything we go forward on, right, because we’re doing things in this plant to teach us how to do it better or more efficiently in the future ones. So having that capacity is pretty important.

OPERATOR

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to Jake DeWitte for closing remarks.

Jacob DeWitte (Co-Founder)

All right, well, thank you all for joining us today. You know, back in August, we were able to turn online the fastest privately sited and fully privately built reactor in history, as far as we know and can tell from all the work we’ve done to study prior examples. And that’s a pretty exciting achievement to be the very first one. Similarly with Aurora, Idaho, we’re making incredible progress at incredible pace, which I think where we’re on trajectory to is similarly on pace to set a world record for fastest privately built fast reactor.

And that’s pretty dang cool. We’re learning a lot. Obviously we’re applying it into it. We are executing, we’re executing meaningfully at scale. That site is abuzz with activity. We had a tour recently with some folks and some partners who came out and when we looked at it, they were shell shocked. And these are folks used to seeing large scale infrastructure development and projects from power to semiconductors to manufacturing equipment, I mean, all sorts of things.

And they were rather excited to see the activity and the pace of progress and just the commitment that the team has to being successful in getting this done. It also puts us in unique territory where we have this unique vector of control to actually complete the project, go forward and do more with the resources and capabilities and capital we have to get this done and not be in the, in the sort of position that nuclear has often found itself, which is where you start a project but you’re contingent on many other things for it to actually get done and built.

We don’t have that. We have everything we need. And that’s an incredible position to be in and something that hasn’t been very present in the United States for decades. But here we are. And I think the team is incredibly excited. I’m incredibly excited about how that’s positioning us for that part of the business. But we also continue to advance other very important things that we’re doing. We can’t turn reactors on without fuel. This is something that we discovered and learned very early on. Well, not that fast, but that we needed to do that ourselves to solve that issue and control our destiny on that. And hence, you know, setting up a leading fuel fabrication capability to make fuel for our reactor, but also develop the capability and capacity to make fuel for others.

There are other reactors that use the same or very similar types of fuel we use, so we can make fuel for them, but also have the infrastructure, the overhead, just the floor space in a fuel fabrication facility that can then be either rented out, leased out, or used to support other fuel forms and types that we see quite a bit of growing interest and demand in, and which are being used today but are not being produced or supplied adequately. So we’re pretty excited about how that opens the door not just to provide critical capabilities we need, but also capabilities others need.

And that opens the door for additional revenues and other partnerships. And then on top of that, we have the ability on recycling to make not just transuranic-bearing fuel forms that we can use, but also feedstock for others. And in light of the current fuel markets and the dynamics at hand, just last week we saw a clear endorsement from a variety of companies pursuing this and the government investing in and supporting capabilities to look at various uses of transuranic-bearing material which we can produce not just for use in our own reactors, but for feedstock for others.

So very exciting stuff, progressing all along the fronts there. And it puts us in a great spot in the fuel business where we are. And then of course, on the isotope side, while we continue to learn from the Groves 1 experience and apply that forward, continue to deepen our buildup of the muscles needed to actually move from isotope production to isotope shipping, and very excited about how we’re seeing ourselves be positioned there with a huge amount of opportunity set to open in front of us. We’ve not lived in a world of isotopic abundance in probably 50 to 60 years or longer, and we’re hoping to change that.

And what that can change is a fundamental rethink about how we use these things, how we develop drugs and treatments. If you combine the capabilities of computational biology and AI to then the capability of having diverse and flexibly produced isotopes, you can open entirely new frontiers for drug discovery and development, which we can be anchored into, which is an incredibly exciting thing for the business, both just from a human impact side, but also from an economic side and perspective.

And I think at the whole and the highest level, you know, what we see happening is a generalized shift into recognizing that the key things that need to happen across the entire nuclear value chain for nuclear to be successful in, we are uniquely positioned and are uniquely executing to enable and support those things, whether it be by offtake, by partnering, by investing and doing with offtake, or doing ourselves, or a mix of those things, so that we are ensuring that those things are functioning for our benefits and then also having economic upside associated with some of those activities for the benefits of nuclear at large.

And that’s a huge benefit obviously for Oklo specifically because we’re tying in the success ourselves and the aspects of the success for nuclear everywhere. And we do that so that we guarantee we can build what we need to build and then get the associated benefits of opening that ecosystem up. So it’s an exciting time for where things stand and appreciate folks joining us. Craig said it earlier, so I decided I’d save it till here. I did welcome our second child who’s approaching four weeks old. Not getting as much sleep as I was before. Not losing sleep though to fuel, losing sleep more to the baby, but on the other hand having more time to think about how we continue to solve these, these things and kind of scale into these opportunities as we see and have the ability to look around corners and get in front of those as much as we can.

But again, I could not be more excited about seeing nuclear coming to meet the opportunities in the chat, but rather seeing an entire ecosystem and broad capital mobilize and actual innovation coming in and challenging the cost paradigms and bringing these things forward. We talked about the cost of Groves 1. When I grew up in the nuclear industry, when I was younger, when I was looking at isotope reactors and I was hearing presentations, the lowest numbers I saw and people talk about were 300, 400, 500 million dollars.

And that was pre-inflation 15 years ago. And we were able to do what we did for around 75 all in. That’s a pretty impressive achievement and an indicator for how we see and how nuclear can be significantly disrupted. And I just think that’s one of the most exciting things in front of Oklo today. So thank you for the time and look forward to talking to you the next time.

OPERATOR

This concludes today’s call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.

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