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Key Takeaways
- Nuclear power startup Oklo on Wednesday announced a partnership with data center provider Switch. The news sent Oklo stock higher, before it cooled in late-morning trading.
- The sides reached a “framework” agreement for Oklo to provide Switch’s data centers with 12 gigawatts of power over the next two decades.
- The deal joins tech’s recent push into nuclear energy as tech giants like Amazon and Microsoft look to find power for their growing data centers.
Oklo (OKLO), a nuclear energy startup, announced a partnership on Wednesday with Switch, a data center provider that works in the cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) industries.
The stock swung wildly as investors digested the news. The stock was recently up less than 1% at around $19 after rising to near $23 in earlier trading.
The sides announced a power agreement for Oklo’s nuclear “powerhouses” to provide 12 gigawatts of power to Switch’s data centers over the next two decades. The companies called it a “framework for collaboration,” and said smaller individual agreements will likely be announced later as the projects reach certain milestones. Financial details were not included in the companies’ statement.
“We believe that working with Switch will not only accelerate our early powerhouses but also accelerate our ability to scale by demonstrating customer demand for decades to come,” Oklo co-founder and CEO Jacob DeWitte said in a statement.
Oklo is in the progress of receiving the required regulatory approvals to build its first “powerhouse,” and in its shareholder letter last month said it expects the first one, set to be built in Idaho, to be online by 2027.
A number of the country’s biggest tech companies have made bets on nuclear energy in recent months, with the likes of Amazon (AMZN), Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL), and Microsoft (MSFT) signing agreements to power some of their data center operations with nuclear power plants. However, regulators have raised questions about whether the deals could end up unnecessarily increasing energy prices for surrounding residents.
Oklo shares have risen some 80% this year as it and other nuclear stocks have been lifted by big-tech nuclear deal announcements.
