Oklo - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Transcript

Speaker 5

Good day, everyone, and welcome to Oklo's second quarter 2025 financial results and business update call. At this time, I would like to hand the call over to Mr. Sam Doane, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Operator. Good afternoon and welcome, everyone, to Oklo's second quarter 2025 earnings and company update call. I'm Sam Doane, Oklo's Director of Investor Relations. Joining me today are Jacob DeWitte, Oklo's Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, and R. Craig Bealmear, our Chief Financial Officer. Earlier today, following the close of markets, we released our second quarter 2025 financial results. Today's accompanying slide presentation is available on the 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 Q&A 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 disclosure included in our supplemental slides.

Additional details on relevant risk factors can also be found in our most recent filings with the SEC. Please note that Oklo assumes 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 now turn the call over to Jacob DeWitte, Oklo's Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer. Jacob. Thanks, Sam. We're starting today's update by highlighting a wave of federal actions that are accelerating momentum behind advanced nuclear technologies and how Oklo is extremely well positioned to benefit. Over the past quarter, we've seen exceptional policy movement from sweeping executive orders to major legislation and national infrastructure strategies. Together, these actions reflect a coordinated federal push to speed up deployment of advanced nuclear technologies, strengthen domestic fuel supply chains, and enhance U.S. energy independence. For Oklo, this shift is highly beneficial.

These aren't just favorable signals, they're concrete steps that support faster licensing, faster deployment, and better project economics for first-of-a-kind deployments. The next few slides will unpack the most significant drivers: the executive orders, the one big beautiful bill, and the federal AI Action Plan, all of which align directly with Oklo's licensing strategy, customer partnerships, and long-term cost advantage. The executive orders signed earlier this year mark a historic shift in federal policy toward advanced nuclear. These executive orders build on legislation from the last Congress and administration to clearly recognize civil nuclear energy as a national and economic security priority. That designation alone reshapes the policy landscape and unlocks access to key government assets, including alternative fuel materials that do not require further enrichment. When used in advanced reactors like Oklo's, these material stockpiles could be made into fuel for more than three gigawatts of powerhouses.

Just as important, these orders direct the DOE and NRC to move faster, streamlining regulatory reviews, reforming reactor testing, and targeting three operational advanced reactors by July 2026. It's rare to see this level of alignment across permitting, fuel access, and deployment. The executive orders go beyond signaling support. They include clear directives that align directly with Oklo's strategy. First, they revitalize the domestic nuclear fuel supply chain with a specific emphasis on recycling. Oklo is one of the few fast reactor companies positioned to use downblended alternative fuel materials which don't require enrichment. This fuel, combined with the industry-leading advances we are making in fuel recycling, can give us a significant structural advantage. Second, the orders prioritize deployment of reactors at national security locations, including AI data centers and defense sites. That aligns with where our customers are heading and where our small, scalable powerhouse designs excel.

Third, the orders mandate licensing reform, capping fees, and setting an 18-month review window for new reactors. That level of regulatory clarity and speed will accelerate Oklo's path to market and strongly supports our combined license strategy. Finally, these orders direct the DOE to accelerate reactor testing and target three operational advanced reactors by July 2026. That's an aggressive timeline and one Oklo could qualify to help deliver on. The one big beautiful bill signed into law in July delivers a suite of policy wins that are directly aligned with Oklo's business model. First, it preserves robust investment and production tax credits through 2033 that then phase out through 2036. These credits improve our project economics and offer additional certainty for early-stage deployment. Second, the bill strengthens the Loan Programs Office, establishing the Energy Dominance Financing Program.

This is important because it provides access to long-term capital for projects that can't yet tap traditional debt markets, like first-of-a-kind deployments. Third, it accelerates NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act, reviews by setting strict deadlines for environmental assessments and impact statements. That helps reduce permitting delays and improves timeline confidence across our project portfolio. Finally, the bill allows for 100% bonus depreciation for assets that begin construction by 2029 and are in service by 2033. That gives us the ability to capture meaningful tax benefits as we build out fuel and manufacturing capabilities. The federal government's AI Action Plan, also released in July, adds a major new dimension to the demand landscape for advanced nuclear. The plan calls for a rapid expansion of AI infrastructure, including high-security data centers and resilient domestic energy systems to support them.

It explicitly recognizes that achieving AI dominance requires building new sources of reliable, dispatchable power like advanced nuclear reactors. Our powerhouses are uniquely suited for this use case, delivering distributed baseload power that can be co-located with mission-critical AI workloads. The policy also calls for streamlining permitting, deregulation, and expanded workforce training to support infrastructure deployment. As AI infrastructure scales, we expect both commercial and policy momentum behind advanced nuclear to continue building, and Oklo is focused on delivering power solutions that meet that need. With that context, I'll turn it over to Craig to walk through how our mission, model, and design choices are translating into real execution advantages.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Jacob. Our mission at Oklo has always been clear: to deliver clean, reliable, and affordable energy at a global scale. Our co-founders started this company with the belief that advanced nuclear could play a transformative role in the world's energy future. That meant rethinking the entire model, from how we design reactors to how we license, fuel, and operate them. That vision continues to guide us today, and it's now clearly aligned with where policy, technology, and customer demand are headed. Moving to the next slide, Oklo's competitive edge comes from the intersection of three key strategies: our business model, our sizing philosophy, and our technology. First, we build, own, and operate our powerhouses, selling power under long-term contracts. That creates recurring revenue and enables us to move more efficiently through the regulatory process.

Second, our small, scalable design allows us to deploy assets quickly, match customer demand in an incremental fashion, and significantly tap into existing supply chains with factory fabrication, which reduces site complexity, cuts cost, and supports faster rollout. Third, our technology is based on proven liquid metal fast reactor designs, with over 400 reactor years of operating history behind it worldwide. That gives us a deep technical foundation with built-in performance and safety benefits. Importantly, it enables us to move directly into commercialization without the need for a costly and time-consuming demonstration plant. I really can't emphasize this point enough: it provides flexibility for Oklo to use fresh HALU, recycled fuel, and downblended alternative fuel for our powerhouses. Together, these advantages position us to deploy at speed and scale with a structure built for long-term growth.

This past quarter, we made meaningful headway across all elements of our milestone framework, from licensing and project execution to fuel development, customer growth, and strategic partnerships. We advanced our NRC engagement, completing phase one pre-application readiness, and saw our licensed operator topical report formally accepted for review. We also took another step towards deployment at scale by selecting Kiewit as our lead constructor for the first Aurora Powerhouse at Idaho National Laboratory. On the customer front, we expanded our pipeline of commercial opportunities with both the Department of Defense and Liberty Energy and advanced our corporate development efforts through agreements with Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power and Vertiv. We also remained disciplined on spend, keeping our cash burn in line with expectations, and ending the quarter with a strong balance sheet.

I'll now hand it back to Jacob to walk through the progress we made this quarter across our licensing project and commercial fronts. Jacob?

Speaker 1

Thanks, Craig. We continue to make meaningful progress this quarter across our regulatory priorities. We completed phase one of the NRC readiness assessment for the Aurora INL combined license application. The NRC found no significant gaps that would bar acceptance for review, reinforcing our readiness to submit phase one of the application, which we expect to file in early Q4 after incorporating NRC feedback. We also had our licensed operator topical report accepted for review. This is an important part of our repeatable deployment strategy. It proposes licensing operators by Aurora technology rather than by site. Once approved, this report can be referenced in future applications, streamlining regulatory timelines and supporting scalable deployment. We are also seeing continued tailwinds across the regulatory landscape. The NRC recently accelerated TerraPower's review timeline by six months and introduced new fee reforms, reducing licensing costs through waivers and lower hourly rates.

These changes further reinforce the momentum we are seeing and could benefit Oklo's licensing path going forward. Finally, recognizing that there is a lot to track on the regulatory front, we launched a public regulatory dashboard on our website that provides a transparent view of our progress across powerhouses, fuel, and radioisotope licensing, helping keep all stakeholders informed as we move forward. Fuel is one of the most important inputs for advanced nuclear, and it is one of the areas where Oklo has built a significant strategic advantage. Our design enables a differentiated fuel strategy built around three complementary sources: access to government stockpiles, commercial supply partnerships, and long-term recycling capabilities. This approach provides greater flexibility, cost control, and resilience than traditional fuel models.

First, we were awarded five metric tons of high-assay, low-enriched uranium, or HALU, from the Department of Energy in 2019 for our first powerhouse at Idaho National Laboratory, and we are uniquely positioned to utilize additional government fuel stockpiles made available under recent executive orders, including enriched uranium and plutonium-based materials that do not require further enrichment. These stockpiles, effectively waste materials that would otherwise be destined for costly disposal programs, can instead be turned into a productive asset for clean energy by Oklo. Second, we're working with enrichers such as Centrus and Hexium to meet both near-term and long-term commercial HALU needs. Centrus supports early deployment with available domestic supply, while Hexium's next-generation atomic vapor laser isotope separation, or AVLIS enrichment technology, could enable lower-cost, scalable production over time.

Third, our fast reactors can use recovered nuclear material from both today's nuclear fleet and future advanced reactors, positioning us to recycle fuel over time and build a vertically integrated long-term supply model. Together, these efforts form a comprehensive and resilient fuel strategy, one that supports near-term deployment while building long-term supply independence. As mentioned, fuel is a critical enabler for advanced nuclear deployment. That's especially true for HALU, which comes with its own cost dynamics. Enrichment is measured in SWU, or separative work unit, and so are its costs. Costs of enrichment are actually driven by both ore and enrichment process efficiency. Producing one kilogram of HALU requires roughly 35 to 60 SWU, plus 30 to 50 kilograms of natural uranium, depending on market conditions. That can create a wide range of cost outcomes. That said, Oklo's design and business model position us well for this market.

We benefit from needing consistent, high-volume fuel across many small units. That matches well with enrichment module capacities and allows us to scale demand over time. Smaller cores also mean more units in the field, creating steady annual uptake that supports long-term supply agreements. We're also watching next-generation enrichment closely. Laser-based approaches like AVLIS could unlock more cost-effective, batch-friendly production over time. Our engagement with Hexium positions us to benefit as that innovation matures. In short, we're managing HALU costs in the near term while building a supply model that reduces volatility and lowers long-term fuel exposure. Oklo's fuel strategy isn't just well-designed; it's being executed today to support rapid deployment and long-term resilience. We've secured HALU from DOE for our first commercial unit, and our fast reactors are uniquely capable of using downblended uranium and plutonium-based fuels, stockpiles that would otherwise be slated for disposal.

With recent policy changes unlocking access, we can fuel dozens of early units from existing government material. We're also executing on commercial partnerships: Centrus for long-term HALU and Hexium for long-term innovation. Their AVLIS technology could materially improve enrichment economics over time. Our fuel strategy doesn't stop at procurement. We're building toward recycling. Oklo's reactors are designed to run on recovered fuel, supporting a closed fuel cycle and long-term resilience. This isn't just a vision for the future. We're operationalizing the strategy now with a model designed to scale. There's a growing consensus that nuclear power is fundamental to the country's energy future, but historically, costs and time delays have held it back. Nuclear power is already the most land and material-efficient energy source, but decades of legacy design, complex safety systems, and custom-built construction have driven up both costs and timelines.

At Oklo, one of the reasons we're in a strong position today is the disciplined approach we've taken to design and cost engineering from the outset. Our liquid metal sodium-cooled design enables inherent and passive safety, reducing the number of safety-grade systems we need. That simplifies our architecture, streamlines regulatory reviews, and lowers both capital and operating costs. We've also minimized the physical footprint of each powerhouse and designed around supply chain scalability, leveraging conventional components and proven industrial partners. In the next few slides, we'll talk through how these choices translate to faster, more cost-effective deployment, starting with our supply chain and system architecture. This is where our design and supply chain strategy come together to deliver real execution benefits. Roughly 70% of our powerhouse components are sourced from non-nuclear supply chains, industrials, energy, and chemicals, for example.

These sectors offer mature, scalable manufacturing capabilities that we can tap into today at lower cost and with shorter lead times than traditional nuclear fabrication. This isn't just about lowering costs; it's about reducing schedule risk as well. By designing around standardized shippable components like the reactor module, steam generators, and power conversion system, we simplify installation, support parallel builds, and minimize on-site construction complexity. We've also reduced the number of safety-grade systems by designing for inherent and passive safety. That helps streamline procurement and reduces the regulatory burden on our supply chain. Our preferred supplier agreement with Siemens Energy is a great example of this strategy in action, and we continue to build out that ecosystem with more partnerships to come as those deals reach commercial readiness. These decisions help us scale faster, deliver sooner, and meet the needs of customers who value both certainty and speed.

We're also pleased to announce that we've selected Kiewit as the lead constructor for the Aurora Powerhouse at Idaho National Laboratory. Kiewit is one of the most experienced engineering and construction firms in the country, with deep expertise in complex energy infrastructure, including nuclear projects. Their capabilities go beyond construction. They also bring integrated procurement, as well as asset and component fabrication capabilities that align well with our modular, repeatable design approach. We've entered into a master services agreement with Kiewit, intended to support the full scope of design, procurement, and construction for the Aurora Powerhouse project at Idaho National Laboratory. Pre-construction activities are scheduled to begin this quarter, including site mobilization, early procurement, and groundwork. We're targeting a pre-construction groundbreaking in late Q3.

This partnership and these efforts help ensure we're positioned to deliver our first powerhouse on a realistic, executable schedule, with commercial operations targeted between late 2027 and early 2028. In parallel, Atomic Alchemy, our radioisotope business, has also begun site characterization work on its commercial isotope production facility at Idaho National Laboratory and submitted its materials license application to the NRC for the Porch Demonstration Facility, continuing momentum on facility development for domestic radioisotope production. The demonstration facility will also produce revenue-generating isotopes, marking an early step toward commercial operations. We also signed the Memorandum of Understanding with Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, one of the largest and most experienced nuclear operators and builders in the world. The agreement is focused on exploring opportunities to collaborate across a range of areas, including project development, licensing, manufacturing, and supply chain coordination.

This partnership reflects a shared interest in deploying advanced nuclear reactors globally and in continuing to drive innovation across the nuclear value chain. It also aligns with our broader strategy of forming international partnerships that can support commercialization and accelerate deployment. As part of our work with data center customers, we also announced a joint development agreement with Vertiv, a leader in data center infrastructure. The partnership focuses on co-developing integrated power and cooling solutions that take advantage of our ability to co-locate power generation and compute infrastructure. With Vertiv, we're building smarter nuclear power systems for compute-intensive infrastructure that could be a huge win for our customers. Vertiv will use steam from our powerhouses to drive chillers, improving the overall energy efficiency of the data center. This helps reduce total energy costs and allows customers to streamline infrastructure with a single integrated solution.

It's a strong example of how we're working directly with customers and infrastructure partners to deliver tailored solutions at the core of their operations, not just selling power, but operating integrated value where it matters most. We continue to have active discussions with other commercial partners and suppliers to round out our deployment ecosystem, ensuring we can deliver scalable energy infrastructure with speed, reliability, and efficiency. With that, I'll hand it over to Craig to expand on our commercial momentum and walk through the financial and customer updates from the quarter.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Jacob. One of the partnerships we're very excited to highlight this quarter is our work with Liberty Energy. Liberty was an early investor in Oklo while we were still a private company, and former CEO Chris Wright served on our board prior to his appointment as the United States Secretary of Energy. We are excited that there continue to be opportunities to collaborate with Liberty in a meaningful way. This partnership is designed to solve a very real customer challenge: how to access reliable power now with a clear path to zero carbon baseload power over time. Together, we have the potential to offer a fully integrated solution that starts with Liberty's gas generation and load management platform that can transition to Oklo's nuclear powerhouses as they come online, providing a faster path to clean energy. This is a strong validation of Oklo's business model.

It demonstrates how our powerhouses can integrate with existing infrastructure to deliver a phased approach that's flexible, financeable, and customer-aligned. Customers get the uninterrupted energy today and a long-term certainty around clean baseload power. Together, we're building a joint commercial platform designed to scale. We are finalizing the commercial structure of the partnership and believe this is a scalable blueprint for high power demand sectors that prioritize reliability and long-term energy certainty. We were also selected by the U.S. Air Force as the intended awardee for what would be a first advanced vision deployment at a U.S. military installation. Under the terms of the Notice of Intent to Award, or NOITA, Oklo was identified as the successful awardee to design, construct, own, and operate a powerhouse that would deliver both electricity and heat under a long-term purchase agreement.

This represents a major milestone both for Oklo and for the broader advanced nuclear sector. It reflects growing recognition of the role nuclear power can play in national security and energy resilience, particularly at distributed and remote sites where reliable power is mission-critical. Oklo is actively working with the U.S. Air Force and Defense Logistics Agency, or DLA, on next steps, and we look forward to providing further updates as the process advances. I will now provide a summary of our financials. Oklo's second quarter operating loss was $28 million, inclusive of non-cash stock-based compensation expense of $11.4 million. Oklo's loss before income taxes in the second quarter was $24.3 million, which reflects our operating loss adjusted for net interest income of $3.8 million.

On a year-to-date basis, when adjusting for non-cash stock-based compensation charges, changes to working capital, and deferred income tax benefits, the cash used in operating activities equates to $30.7 million. We still expect, on a full-year basis, cash used in operating activities to be within the guided range of $65 to $80 million that we disclosed at the start of this year. In addition, based on our earlier discussion points in this company update, we now see an opportunity to potentially accelerate the modest CapEx investments from 2026 into 2025, which could include advancing deployment activities at Idaho National Laboratory before year-end, progressing fuel supply and fabrication activities in response to the executive orders, and other activities to deploy powerhouses beyond Idaho National Laboratory.

We also completed a successful marketed first follow-on equity transaction on June 12, generating $460 million in gross proceeds, providing the company with additional cash on hand to deliver our enhanced growth agenda. As a result of the capital raise, we ended the second quarter with approximately $683 million in cash and marketable securities on our balance sheet. To wrap up, I want to briefly highlight why we believe Oklo is one of the most compelling opportunities in the advanced nuclear industry. We're deploying proven fast reactor technology in a compact, scalable format designed to reduce cost, complexity, and deployment timelines. We are vertically integrated across power generation, fuel recycling, and radioisotopes, unlocking multiple high-value revenue streams. Our business model is built around long-term parasols, delivering recurring revenue, margin visibility, and customer stickiness.

We are pursuing superior economics through standardized design, repeatable deployment, and recycled fuel that drives long-term capital efficiency and competitive levelized cost of energy. Our 14-gigawatt pipeline spans data centers, defense, utility, and industrial customers, reflecting strong and growing demand. We have developed a streamlined licensing strategy aligned with our business model, backed by regulatory expertise, a repeatable COLA path, and accelerating federal tailwinds. At its core, Oklo is more than a technology company. We're building an energy platform to serve the world's next era of growth. Thank you for your time. Operator, we are now ready to take questions.

Speaker 5

Thank you, sir. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. We ask that you limit yourselves to one question and one follow-up. The first question today comes from Jeffrey Leon Campbell from Seaport Research Partners.

Good evening and congratulations on all the multifaceted progress. Regarding the STEMP pressurized water reactor fuel, current law appears to dictate that the DOE cannot take title to utility STEMP fuel until a permanent disposal site is designated. What's your take on how this might be amended to support Oklo's future recycling effort? I ask this question in the atmosphere of the significant nuclear power push that's been coming from the executive orders.

Speaker 1

Yeah, I think so. It's a good question. As the law stands and the policy stands, there's nothing that gets in the way of us being able to work with utilities and the government to take the material and actually recycle it. The main challenges are, generally speaking, having the infrastructure facility to do it. There are some logistical dynamics about what's the best and most efficient path, given kind of the nature of the situation, which is that, by definition, the Department of Energy is supposed to be disposing of this material in a repository. That is not happening. The Department of Energy is reimbursing effectively the utilities for holding the material on site because they failed to meet their duties under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.

That said, we have a great opportunity to help address a lot of that, and it kind of hits on two fronts, right? The biggest thing for us is it allows us to deal with fuel supplies. I mean, used fuel is effectively 90+% unused fuel, and with recycling, you can actually tap into and harness that material and use it. That's a massive reserve of material. Very importantly, advanced recycling techniques like what we're doing, coupled with a fast reactor like what we're doing, enables you to do that in a very cross-transformative way. The paradigm that has largely existed in the academic sphere has suggested nuclear recycling is economically challenging.

That maybe arguably has some legs to stand on in the era of much lower fuel costs and when you're trying to produce a fuel that today's light water reactors can use, which requires a much higher purity fuel form. That's not the case with a fast reactor. You can tolerate a much lower sort of purity fuel form. In other words, you can have all the transuranics mixed up together and commingled. The implication then is therefore a lower cost facility, which then you're amortizing a lower cost over more fuel throughput, which means the actual fuel produced from recycling will be a much lower cost, even we think, than fresh fuel, like considerably less.

That's a pretty attractive paradigm for that alone, especially given that when we look at how do you meet the order book and how do you scale into the opportunity, tapping into recycling is a massive upside. It also helps change the paradigm around waste management considerably, right? You're taking the material, you're reducing volume substantially. You still produce, no matter what you do, some high-level radioactive waste that will need some form of disposition. You change the characteristics of it radically in recycling. Generally, you shorten the half-life to be something that decays away in several hundreds of years, not hundreds of thousands of years.

You change the nature of the form factor because you reduce the volume, but you can also then co-alloy these fission products, the things that you need to dispose of, with things like glasses or metals or things like that, all of which open up much more different options. You have just a much larger, diverse set of opportunities and options for disposal and disposition, which is great because you can create a much more, I would say, community-oriented kind of consent-based siting approach for how you dispose of this. Not to mention, interim storage becomes a lot more palatable because of the nature of the material and having less volume. That said, some utilities have a different push and pull to get this done sooner than later.

Others are sort of taking a little bit of a more, I would say, conservative approach, waiting for some of these infrastructure plays to come out to bear. In other words, waiting for us to build and start operating before they're going to want to jump into something. We're finding some constructive engagement with folks to figure out how do you actually find the optimal path to move this material over to us to then be able to fuel it and find the right sort of pathway that manages the different stakeholders, right? From a risk and sort of title perspective, in the best way. There is a reality that what we're doing is also a pretty considerable service to managing used fuel, to the government who has the title to dispose of it per the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, and therefore, has some benefits that are pretty helpful there.

Not to mention, there's some other things we can do, right? We can take some of those fission products that would be disposed of. There are some industrial and medical applications for some of those. I think another kind of key part of this is the fact that really reducing the volume really changes how we think about this stuff. I think from the utility side, the most interesting fuel for us to start with is actually the freshest fuel out of the reactor. In other words, the stuff that's in the pools today, not the stuff in the casks. That stuff's also interesting, but if we had to pick and choose, we'd pick the pools' stuff first, which is great because that's where the most kind of constrained pressure is in storage.

All in all, I actually think that on the heels of the executive order, which makes it clear that this is going to be a direction that we move into, it builds on work that came from the Biden administration. Before that, from Trump, we find that we're in a spot to actually be executing fully and to actually developing out the right sort of plan to site, locate, build this facility and start receiving and actually recycling material and producing fuel. All that does take time. We've been at the pre-application and site selection work for a long time here, but it's all lining up for us to be kind of accelerating to move a little bit faster, especially given how much it unburdens us on the fuel side.

No, that's great color. We could also add that the taxpayers are currently paying for the storage of the spent fuel. There might be an argument there if there's any resistance to moving that waste towards Oklo. I just wanted to ask you, sticking with fuels, can you provide some color on the recently announced AVLIS effort? It appears Hexium is most focused on AVLIS for lithium to produce tritium at this time. I was interested to hear how the shift to uranium might be accomplished. I'm aware of the history of that. What's specific to Hexium? I would even move them to uranium.

Yeah, I'll just give you a little more color for everyone's benefit. I'm just talking about AVLIS. It's atomic vapor laser isotope separation. It's one of the more promising techniques for isotope separation using some pretty cool technology. I mean, like you combine lasers, you know, isotope separation. It's pretty cool stuff. It has significant improvements in efficiency, cost, and operational characteristics that, generally speaking, suggest a lower levelized cost of a separate work unit or levelized cost of enrichment unit than centrifuges do in the current paradigm, which has significant upside for reducing the overall cost of fuel delivered to our systems. The techniques used for AVLIS can be tuned for a number of different isotopes. Hexium, you know, initially was starting to focus on looking at some of the work with lithium, just given some of the dynamics that they saw with opportunities for that.

They also saw the opportunities in uranium. Part of the reason that bringing them into markets and help them sort of, you know, move that technology forward. They come out of the same, you know, in many ways, the origination of a lot of this technology was focused on enrichment capabilities for things like uranium. The ability to use it for that, as well as some other, by the way, stable isotopes that are relevant to the medical isotopes, you know, part of the business that we have. They all kind of are actually complementary. That's part of how we're looking at these partnerships is the ability to produce isotopes in high-purity forms for different use cases.

Obviously, the big attractive one is enriched uranium for fuel, but there's also important aspects about producing higher quality targets with enriched isotopes for radiation and Atomic Alchemy facilities or even just selling the products themselves. That's an area where we continue to be engaged and focused on and finding the right ways to partner and accelerate and kind of deepen the partnerships we have in those spaces.

Again, sort of at the high level, enrichment is, I think, at this place where we're, for the first time, seeing a pretty significant, let me rephrase this, first time in a little while, probably in the last 20 years, that we're seeing a pretty significant pressure of new technology coming forward because of, you know, technology R&D coupling with an opportunity in the market with this massive demand for new enrichment capacity that's bringing forward new and more innovative approaches that have the potential to significantly change cost curves. AVLIS has a long history behind it, and I would argue largely the reasons it didn't get commercialized on the first go were the market was pretty soft for uranium demand back in the 1990s. It wasn't clear if those investments were going to be worthwhile.

The other factor is we've gotten a lot better at laser techniques, like a lot better technologically in the last 30 to 40 years. It has really changed the paradigm to make it an interesting time now for this, which is what we're at opportunity. We're also continuing to engage with folks who are, you know, working with more established centrifuge technologies like Centrus.

Great. Thank you.

Speaker 5

The next question comes from Sherif Ehab Elmaghrabi from BTIG.

Speaker 1

Hey, thanks for taking my questions. On the deal with Liberty, I imagine some of those customers are members of that 14-gigawatt pipeline that you've got. It's interesting on the revenue side, could Oklo start recognizing revenues sooner, say, when those projects are seeing gas, generating power from gas?

Speaker 2

Sure, I can take that. It's still early days for how we turn that agreement into an actual set of commercial terms and conditions with our customers. I'm not really at Liberty, for no pun intended, to say who we're progressing those discussions with. Yeah, you're correct. If there was a mechanism whereby we participated in early power sales, that could potentially lead to revenue recognition for the company.

Speaker 1

Okay, interesting. Thank you for that. Jake, one more, in your prepared remarks, you mentioned that you guys have one of the only reactor designs that can run on downblended fuel. Can you just speak to why that is? I thought that was pretty interesting. Yeah. It's a great question. I think it kind of has a bunch of details into it that obviously I like to get into. For time's sake, I'll be a little brief. There's kind of a couple of ways to look at it, right? Downblended high enriched uranium that's fresh, highly enriched uranium, by and large, is probably going to be useful for most everyone. That said, there's not a lot of that material that's coming available.

The material we're seeing is typically stuff that's either going to have been rejected for prior use because of some level of impurity contamination or because it was already irradiated in reactors. In both cases, especially in the latter, you build up isotopes in the nuclear space. We call those the isotopic vectors. Isotopes of uranium that are not conducive to use in reactors that use moderators and slow the neutrons down, think pretty much any reactor that uses TRISO fuel or graphite moderators or water as a coolant, they can't really use those very well without significant neutron penalties because of the nature of some of those isotopes. Whereas in a fast spectrum reactor, it's really not that significant if even a penalty at all. You can handle those materials.

Furthermore, the other aspect that's interesting here is another source of this material is the excess plutonium inventories that, per the president's executive orders, are being made available to industry. That's a sizable opportunity that's honestly, I think, kind of hard to overstate because of the potential implications it has. We're talking about, you know, that material could be made into hundreds of thousands of kilograms of HALU equivalent material. The nature of that material is heavily biased towards, I would call it, a more streamlined usage and designed to accommodate in fast neutron reactors. The reality gets into a lot of details, but plutonium-based fuels have a long history of their usage in fast reactors. They also have a usage in water-cooled reactors and can be used, but there doesn't exist the fuel fabrication infrastructure to support that. It's a lot more complicated from a reactor design.

Let me rephrase it. It can be a lot more complicating to the core design and reactor design from what we do today. The French obviously do this. The Japanese have done it. It's solvable. It introduces a change that isn't exactly the most, isn't one that I'd say today's operating plants are rushing into necessarily, given that fresh, like LEU is a superior fuel form. Part of the reason is just because plutonium has a very different, it's much more absorbing of neutrons, both to fission and to just capture than uranium-235 is at the slow energy spectrums. It's also in the higher energy spectrums, but that delta causes a lot of localized kind of dynamics that you really have to account for and manage against in a light water reactor. Again, doable. In a fast reactor, it's just frankly easier to achieve and accommodate.

Also, the fuel fabrication for plutonium-bearing materials using metallic fuel, which is like what we use, can just be done in a way that, from a facility design and management perspective, generally speaking, has just simpler considerations than around, for example, fabricating into oxide fuel for light water reactors. There's a lot of nuance around it, but it's one of the key things that's pretty attractive and differentiating for us. We see those materials as being pretty valuable in the opportunity to sort of bridge us. You know, you use those materials in the near term that then help us alleviate the demand needs for HALU in the very near term, which then gives us a lot more grace as those supply chains build up so that we can start, you know, shipping fuel and reactors more quickly as a result of that.

That's one of the things we're working towards and are excited about on the heels of those executive orders. A nuance, but helpful. Thanks, Jake.

Speaker 5

Thanks.

Speaker 2

Yeah, Dorsheimer from William Blair has the next question.

Hey, thanks for all the details and thanks for letting me ask a question. Jake, first question for you is just, you know, as you look at your pipeline and as you look at the opportunities and conversations, I'm curious how you're thinking about the opportunities behind the meter versus front of the meter. There seems actually to be almost more excitement behind the meter, you know, around data center buildouts. I'm just curious how you would think of the power generation, domestically, split between those two. I have a follow-up.

Speaker 1

It's a great question. What we see is it's evolving pretty considerably and just goes at the pace of different opportunities and different announcements of everything from policy to buildouts to actual projects. I think what we're finding is, on paper, the bias is majority focused on behind-the-meter applications and opportunities. The practical reality of getting to that seems to focus probably more near-term on some front-of-the-meter deployments before that happens. What I mean by that is I think it depends, right? We are in conversations and we're talking about literally having the nature of both of those happening. It's just that delivering the right suite, which is part of why the partnership with Liberty Energy is so important, delivering the right suite of options to deliver power at that reliability and availability rate, I'm confident that in time, nuclear can demonstrate and validate and do that.

To start with, it's just a little bit more economically challenging to do it on a pure nuclear solution versus having a diversified fuel source. Long story short, I think we're finding that in many ways, the behind-the-meter is more elegant on paper and makes a lot more sense. In some of the near-term actual deployment realities and implications, being grid-tied and connected to it is helpful. I'm sorry, Judd, I'm probably over-interpreting towards more, when I say behind-the-meter, I'm saying truly behind-the-meter with minimal expectation of the grid. I think where you're behind-the-meter and you're connected to the grid, that is probably that near-to-midterm sweet spot while all these things evolve. I do think there's, generally speaking, some degree of preference there. We also see, in some cases, the front-of-the-meter has some high value in certain markets.

I feel like I'm just giving you a long rambling answer to say we're seeing it's a mix and it varies heavily by state, by location, by customer. It does feel like probably the weight of it prefers a behind-the-meter offering in time.

Yeah, you hit on it. I mean, I think the hybrid was really what I was getting after. It seems to be where most of the demand is developing right now, around SMR. That's why I was asking. As my follow-up, just, you know, shifting gears on the radiopharma market, it's about a $30 billion opportunity and growing, I should say. You know, as you look at the isolation of particular isotopes, obviously small quantities can sell for a tremendous amount of money. Are there specific isotopes that you have an inherent advantage or moat around, given your processing capability, that you're going to be focused on? I'm just curious as those might be specific to certain drugs or applications. Any more details around that would be helpful. Thanks.

Yeah, I love it. It's awesome. There is so much more that will be unfolding going forward on this because you are nailing exactly it, which is how do we prioritize, select, and where are the ones we have sort of unique advantages into. Starting at a high level, what we see is there are some near-term opportunities on a couple sort of isotopes that we're going through, looking at what those markets are like and kind of the supply chain pieces to prioritize as part of some of our pilot efforts that are happening out in Idaho right now.

From there, we see a pretty significant scaling advantage, and we're looking at ways to get engaged in and possibly even opportunities to maybe invest into the supply chain or at least partner in the supply chain to enhance what we see as some of the moats that we can build and have, in terms of some of the production, of either sourcing of stable isotopes or just raw feed targets. I think at scale, so I'm kind of giving you a little bit of an answer to come back again because we're going to have a lot more as it comes. I think at scale, the other thing we see is that part of the angle of why we're attracted to Atomic Alchemy, it's kind of twofold integration.

One is the benefit to being able to pull stuff out from recycling where we do have some isotopes that are going to be made in bulk quantities, things like strontium-90 in particular. There are a bunch of others that have interesting potential industrial applications that could be unlocked at scale in a voluminous way based on what recycling can tap into, which is a pretty cool space to be in. There is that kind of piece. A lot of those isotopes are generally going to be longer-lived isotopes that are held up in the waste because most of this waste has been decaying for some time. There is that part and unlocking some of the things you can do with those that right now, frankly, don't really exist.

That's one of the hard things, but cool things about this is some of the stuff we're going to pull out and going to be able to pull out, people haven't even bothered to look into the use of it because it's just not available to even research with or study very much. They don't prioritize it. We expect this first to nucleate an entirely different ecosystem of philosophy around research and development around different isotopic uses because of all of a sudden it becoming available.

Additionally, there's the direct production kind of on a specific basis of irradiating targets and producing that material, which is part of what we were attracted to Atomic Alchemy's VIPER reactor design to do, given that we see it as one of the sort of most cost-attractive options we've ever seen, where it's kind of a, I'm going to use a very blunt kind of analogy. It's not maybe the best, but like instead of designing and building a custom Formula One race car to produce some of these isotopes that's extremely expensive but can produce some of these isotopes, and the cost of those isotopes actually can justify doing so. It's fun from a technical perspective for sure. It makes the deployment, development, everything really, really hard on those, which is why a lot of these reactors haven't been built.

Instead, Atomic Alchemy took an approach saying, hey, let's just build like a Ford F-150 version of a reactor that does the job. Maybe it's not as fast as some of these other things, but it's totally buildable, supplyable today, and you can build a lot more of them and just have a make neutrons more cheaply than, you know, maybe anything else to irradiate these materials and produce them. That then allows us to tap into those known isotope fields with a potential vector and being more cost-competitive than what exists or just lower cost of production, frankly, than what exists. That said, I think those markets seem to be in many ways today in an inelastic state of demand. You just keep supplying and they're going to take as much as you get.

There's also the case where having that capacity and that flexibility and that versatility of different isotopes can actually open the door to do more things. I'm kind of giving you a non-answer, Judd, but it's partly because we'll have more to talk about there soon. Also, part of this is actually looking at what this opens the door to incentivize and curate an ecosystem that thinks more broadly out of a mindset of abundance of different isotopes that right now people can't even think about using. There are the usual players, but I think there's a lot more that could be coming on the horizon because now we can focus on how we can actually produce those and not be as scarcity-limited as we have been. I think it's a, like you said in your comments, it's that size market and I think growing.

I think that's one of the things we see as a way to unlock even more growth, by sort of bolstering production and availability of a much more diverse set of radioisotopes. Then we'll get more use cases of them because people will bother to actually invest and use them, which you can think about creates a really cool ecosystem to be a pretty significant part of. That's part of how we see that playing out.

Sounds good. I'll jump back in queue. Thank you.

Speaker 5

The next question is from Ryan James Pfingst from B. Riley Securities.

Hey guys, thanks for taking my questions. First, could you give us a sense of potential timing around Oklo's project milestones, or maybe just how licensing and development might differ for projects located on military or defense installations like that one?

Speaker 1

Yeah, it's a fascinating question because the reality is it's all shifted a lot on the heels of the executive orders being signed. Obviously, a strong focus on those was leveraging defense use cases and accelerating defense use cases. This is a great one of those. It does set the stage for some interesting things to be supportive of either more streamlined or potentially, I would say, more focused and therefore potentially faster reviews on the environmental and siting aspects of this. The Air Force has pursued through the Ailsen project and they want us to get an NRC license for this plant. That's the general plan. Of course, they also have the capability of the Defense Department to authorize on their own.

Should that be something they want to do for other deployments or in different cases or even do different things, they have that optionality, which is kind of cool. That said, the nature of that facility and working in Alaska is, of course, interesting and unique. We're going through the aspects of actually getting all of that work in motion and the siting work to then come forward with what the timelines and the various details of that are going to look like with respect to application submission timelines, when to expect to break ground, do all that kind of stuff. Given that you have a short construction window, given all of those factors, it's obviously very seasonal. We have to kind of play with and optimize against those.

What we expect at the moment is going forward, we'll be able to get into the more detailed site work and everything we would need to do really next summer. The schedules will kind of anchor in accordingly from there. It's all actively developing as part of this path. I think the Air Force has said this a couple of times in a couple of ways, but I think of it as the pathfinder aspect of this. They see a huge opportunity for what nuclear can do to bolster their mission capabilities. What they want to see is how we can, or what they want to do is be able to work with industry to find ways to deliver that in different models of what that needs to look like. One of the things you're constrained by anytime you're working with the government is their contracting structures and mechanisms.

You know, also in addition, it's working with those and finding the right pathways for that to do the things that they want to see happen. A heavy amount of focus from defense energy in the past has been using defense land to build renewable projects that are effectively shipping off the grid. Maybe the Defense Department is benefiting some from that, but this is different, right? This is internal-facing and priorities. Prioritized, I mean. It's cool. It's a little different, but pretty cool, and also opens the door for just the combination of different approaches of how we optimize that. Additionally, it's not just electricity they're buying. There's a lot of steam that they're buying from our plants too. What that means is if you think about what a nuclear system is, it's primarily producing heat. Typically, you produce that, you turn that heat into electricity.

In this case, you siphon off some of that heat before it gets turned into electricity and actually use it to heat infrastructure. That has obviously a lot of value for a lot of reasons, especially up in Alaska. It's a little bit of a, it's developing and we're working through all those pieces. We'll continue to keep the market updated as that progresses. That's how it's setting, basically how it's progressing and how it's setting up now.

I appreciate that, Jake. For my second question, shifting away from the federal side to commercial customers, how do we think about LOI to order conversion at this stage? Does the Liberty collaboration and some of the other partnership announcements you've made recently accelerate when we might see a firm order with one of the data center customers that's in your pipeline today?

Yeah, I'll start with a little bit and then ask Craig to jump in as well. I think in general, it's supportive in opening up different apertures of the conversations. As we've said generally in the past, what we find is the demand isn't going anywhere. The opportunity in the market is pretty significant. The details are then figuring out the right ways to constructively build long and deep partnerships that really manage the various aspects of these projects and the deployment realities in a much more sustainable and scalable way than just rushing into a PPA to make it sound kind of, you know, a little bit simplistic in how I answer that. That is kind of the reality, which is, we continue to keep these conversations at pace. We continue to find a lot of enthusiasm and excitement.

It really just seems to be, as we progress these things, the opportunity space of what's possible in terms of deepening and strengthening ties is looking at all parts of the ecosystem to be supportive of our success. Also, honestly, candidly, the success of the nuclear industry as a whole. We're excited about the positioning we have to help lean into that. On the Liberty side, it does help set the stage for doing some things a little more, I would say, it's a little different cadence and tempo in some cases where you have that gas infrastructure. What we continue to see is that the focus tends towards nuclear as a long-term solution, gas having a lot of opportunity in the near term. A cool thing for us is we've been pioneers in that bridging gas to nuclear on a new capacity and new deploy perspective.

I think we're seeing how that unlocks thinking about different sites and different cadencing in different ways. It does help. It kind of changes some of how we cadence and tempo some of these customer discussions. At the same time, we're still focused on the macro of trying to make the most of the opportunity, if that makes sense, through the right partnerships. I talked for a long time, though Craig can add some more detail going.

Speaker 2

Yeah, I would just say, you know, partnerships take time. Because we're trying to do things beyond just, you know, optimizing on a PPA price, I think it'll take us a little bit longer to get things in place. For all the right reasons, our business development team stays quite busy and is traveling quite a bit. They're keeping the legal and finance team quite busy as well. I think we're moving things. It also a little bit goes back to Jed's earlier question around, I think it's safe to say that the interest in front of the meter feels like it's grown a lot in the last 12 months. I think that's also where we're trying to be customer responsive as we progress those customer discussions.

As I think I've said, Ryan, probably on earlier calls, we're entertaining prepayments like what we did with Equinix, things we might do at the asset level investment. There's a whole host of avenues of things that we're exploring with our customer base at the moment.

Speaker 1

Great. I appreciate all that detail. I'll turn it back.

Speaker 5

The next question comes from Derek John Soderberg from Cantor Fitzgerald.

Yeah, hey guys, thanks for taking the questions and my congrats as well on the capital raise. I'll just keep it at one question here, Jake. In the prepared remarks, you mentioned TerraPower's regulatory timeline. I think you said it's sped up by six months. I was wondering what the reason for that was, what did that entail? You know, are you already seeing some tangible benefits from the executive orders on regulatory timelines? You know, could Oklo see a sizable timeline shift forward as well? Thanks.

Speaker 1

Yeah, I appreciate the question. I think that's one of the exciting things is we've seen the NRC be quite responsive and take an approach in lines that reflects clearly what the policy objectives and goals of this administration are to move those things more quickly based on what they did with TerraPower. We're similarly seeing benefits. You know, it's interesting when we went public, when you kind of had a review path of 24 to 36 months, so then the advance at capping things, you know, and different contingencies around the 25-month period to now saying it's 18 months, like, it's pretty great. That's helpful. That said, you know, there's still, I think, various things and what we're seeing in the pre-application space, I think, is constructive to those things.

I think it's been interesting because we went through phase one readiness that helped the NRC map out, and especially in the wake of kind of where things are now, how they would plan to do the review, make sure they had all the information they would need to do it, which kind of amplifies in some ways the importance of those. We were pretty encouraged as well that we had no, you know, sort of significant gaps that were needed there. That's a big win for us and for the NRC, I think. At the end of the day, we feel pretty good about where that positions us on that part. Still a lot more work to do, but that's good.

Looking at the next phase and phase two and that progressing, I mean, I think it'll be very clearly aligned to say, okay, let's make sure we have a very strong like angle on how we get through the actual licensing steps and process in that 18-month window, which is just great for everybody, right? Because it accelerates things for us. There are other aspects at play, though, we have to be mindful of just the realities, that can perhaps raise the bar a little bit on the front end of, you know, on the acceptance side and how the NRC plans. We want to be mindful of that. Obviously, in part of why we're doing readiness assessments is to manage that.

That can be something that affects those timelines and how we think about making sure we're submitting something that's, you know, in the best sort of position for everybody. Additionally, one of the things that we're pretty intrigued by is how the executive orders are setting the stage for completely different licensing pathways above the NRC side, which is pretty powerful given that there's still a lot of moving parts at the NRC front. Opening the door for things that might be doable under Department of Energy authorization could accelerate timelines considerably for a number of things. That's pretty dang exciting too. We're engaging in those to look at ways that might accelerate our ability to bring something online.

There is a path potentially to having a regulatory review done under the Department of Energy, build the plant, turn it on, and then after you've done that initial work, you can transition it to the facility. These are things that haven't really been done before, but that's kind of the beautiful thing about today. We're actually reinvigorating the whole ecosystem to think outside the boxes and the shells that we as an industry have thought in for the last, candidly, 50-plus years. Now there's so much more potential on the table about, hey, what could we do? What could this look like? There's no reason that can't necessarily be done. Maybe that's the faster way to get some first plants built. Maybe that's the faster way to get through some of the things like first-time licensing challenges and hurdles.

There's not a clear answer yet because we're still not even three months out from those, but we're working through all parallel paths that we can to optimize against what makes the most sense, not just from a time perspective, but from a time and from a scalable and deployable perspective to enable us to try to get more plants built sooner and faster. When I think about things simplistically, the executive orders really drive a more aggressive timeline schedule, which is great. That means you take some of that permitting challenge and timing risk to a different level, right? It's a different kind of, you get a lot of risk reduced just by that.

Additionally, you have a totally different change on the fuel side because of what's happening in the executive orders to make more fuel available from being this excess plutonium material that could support dozens of reactors being built without needing any HALU. Like that's huge because that helps set the market for us to then build more plants, have stronger partnerships with HALU providers to then get to those HALU kind of production goals at the right pace and scale. It's a very, very supportive ecosystem right now that's really changed the equation from where we were just three months ago, frankly.

Speaker 2

Got it. That's helpful. I'll pass it on. Thanks, guys.

Speaker 5

The next question is from Craig Kenneth Shere at TUI Brothers.

Hi. Thanks for the call and taking my questions. Hopefully, some quicker ones for me. Do you have a timeline or roadmap for announcing PPAs on your Idaho National Laboratory plant? Do you have line of sight on sufficient fuel for a full 75 megawatts there at this point? Given government support with rejected plutonium fuel that you say can support a lot, at this point, once you get past initial regulatory hurdles, could we see multiple powerhouses all announced at once?

Speaker 1

Yes, good questions. Yeah, we continue to move through. We're finding that there is more interest in power from the Idaho plant, from different folks and in different ways, not to mention the other benefits we get from it. Part of what's beautiful about that plant is the benefit to provide fast neutron irradiation capabilities. We're continuing to explore different ways that we can partner with government and other groups and focus in industry and academia, leverage some of the positions we have there, utilize some of that. Additionally, part of what we're doing with Vertiv is setting the stage to build a pilot, thermal-based cooling system at that plant and demonstrate that, which is great. That's getting some interest from different folks to come in and be part of that.

We're finding it's probably going to be a mix of offtake and use case, and that's what's been important about how we structure that is to be flexible. I guess I would say I've long bet that there would be a lot of demand for that power, and we're seeing that that's definitely the case. How we structure it, again, gets back to the prior conversation of what Craig was saying, looking at the right ways and making sure we're doing all the things that get the most for sort of where everyone wants to be and how to structure it in the right ways.

The main value to me in that plant is getting it built, but it's obviously great that we can do additional things with it like we're showing, and having a diversity of use cases like we're showing is pretty important too, because you find different ways to get different partners to the table in meaningful ways too. Bridging from that to the fuel piece, yep, we are uniquely positioned with those five tons of material. That's awesome. We would like to have some more to run that plant in a normal way all the way up to 75 megawatts. It's pretty clear that there's a number of sources. It hasn't been finalized what we're going to do with that, but there is way, way, way more material.

We're working through the different logistics about how and what the right sources and cadencing is going to be for those with in mind, let me rephrase, while maintaining in mind the other part of what you said, which is setting the stage for multiple announcements kind of at once. You know, I think one of the things that we see that's so exciting about fast reactors and recycling is the ability to effectively tap into known reserves of heavy metals and power the entire planet's energy needs for basically the durable lifetime of the planet. It's a bold, aggressive thing to do, but physics in many ways is designed for that. Building out the right pieces and infrastructure to actually realize that is something that we've long been motivated, driven by, and dream of.

Part of that includes getting the right pieces in place to build a lot more plants a lot faster, right? That's what we can do in the heels of the EO announcements. I think what we see is, you know, generally speaking. Working

Speaker 5

Towards what the next plants are going to be and figuring out the right partners that we can have at the table to make those next. In most of our conversations after this sort of Idaho and Air Force pieces, those become larger campuses with more plants at them. That's kind of how we explore that. All of that has set the stage very favorably for that. You know, we could run to have something more quickly, but leave some potential significant things off the table, which we think is the less optimal thing to do than build the right partnerships that help us really be successful in delivering all these things we want to do, which also, by the way, is what's so exciting about nuclear today. You're sort of building the right kind of dynamics and partnerships to do this.

One of the nice things about our model of designing, owning, and operating, we have a very clear sense and insight into factors we need to drive and not manage that. When we find partners who can lean in to help us with those, can do so in the most creative ways. It's a lot simpler. This is a crude analogy, but to kind of have a two-body problem like that in that sense than it is to have a multi-body problem where you might have a utility in between or developer, or even both, or all of those in between and trying to figure out and solve for the different pain points you have. It just kind of complicates the field and the space of operation. It's helpful for us that we kind of have this approach.

I will say another thing we're seeing, though, and is a possibility always been the case from onset for the business. I think we've long been convicted utilities aren't really going to be interested, nor are they really the right ones to move forward on first of a kind deployments for these kinds of technologies. They can be very useful partners in some cases where if you build and develop a project that's unlike we're doing, we make this easier. You could turn the asset, flip the asset over to them. You could sell the asset to them. That is a possible thing that can be done and something that was kind of baked into some of the conversations that Carolyn and I had before we founded the company way back when.

I think it all sets the stage for some pretty creative dynamics for how it's all come together to, I would say, make nuclear pretty clearly inevitable. That's how I would characterize it from my opinion.

Speaker 1

Great. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Eric Stine from Craig-Hallum is next.

Speaker 1

I think Craig just wants to sneak in a few here at the end. The topical report accepted by the NRC, is there a way to think about the timing of that process? I know that you're kind of taking a different path, so maybe that's a bit of an unknown, but maybe initial thoughts on how that speeds up the timeline. Once you get through that, what % of the process would that take care of that you then don't have to replicate for each successive deployment?

Speaker 5

Yeah, I think there's an interesting cadence of tactics and strategy about, you know, pre-application and topical reports. I think there can be an appeasement strategy where you feed the NRC just topical reports and don't actually move deeply into the licensing space until you spend a lot of time doing all that and be very conciliatory and not be kind of innovative and leaning into the opportunity to do things, especially now, a little bit differently. That's been the playbook that is kind of how the industry has thought about things before, but hasn't really yielded very many successful results, clearly. What we see is more important to kind of leverage them in a much more strategic way in terms of targeting an issue beyond just the first plant.

Instead of kind of thinking something like what a topical report is, is an ability for you to take an issue, a regulatory issue to the NRC, I'm being obviously a bit simplistic and colloquial, but to the NRC and have them do a review and issue some kind of safety evaluation report typically out of it, which provides a good precedent to be able to reference going forward in future application. In some ways, you're able to do some, let's say, preseason licensing, but where the score actually counts. Maybe a better analogy is early season games. I don't know. Anyway, the score does count, but you don't get the whole thing at once. It's a great way to compartmentalize or incrementalize certain things you need to do.

It's also a really good way to deal with generic, broad, cross-cutting issues that might affect fleet-wide considerations, like in our case, how we look at licensing operators, where instead of licensing a single operator to run each individual single reactor, which is the typical model, or maybe site, which is the typical model, it's actually a trained operator can run any of the plants of that class anywhere, wherever they are. It looks a lot more like how aviation does piloting. Right. Instead of having a pilot that can fly one or maybe two tail numbers of a specific plane, like an Airbus or Boeing 737 or A320, now you instead have, like that would be insane and really inefficient. That's probably why they don't do it.

When you think about smaller reactors and more of them going to a model where instead, hey, no, I can actually fly all A320s or 737s or whatever, or, you know, bigger plane, that kind of hybrid similarities is at play here where you can then do that for the whole fleet of reactors. There is a lot of scalability benefit to that. I think the general timeline has been about 12 or so months from that. That does take some of the operational considerations that we will be able to reference some of those with our application. What it's really mostly helpful for is actually for the plant second, third, fourth, and beyond. That's where it's a lot more helpful. I always have been building this kind of thing.

It's kind of like when I think about licensing, I think about going back when I was younger, playing sports, whether it be soccer or golf or baseball, whatever, you don't swing at the ball or hit at the ball or just kick at the ball. You got to kick through. You got to swing through. Right. You got to follow through. That's the same thing here. We're not optimizing for just the first. It's about how we set the stage to hit the things after that. Through the first and beyond. That, for example, is a very clear one to do. There are additional things we're working on with the NRC from the pre-application perspective that helps set the stage for that.

We expect, I would say, it's pretty hard to point to a specific length of singular acceleration for the first plant, but it's going to provide significant acceleration for the plants thereafter, which is part of what's so important about this kind of model and how we've kind of taken that approach. Accordingly, on the tactical aspects, those are all strategic implications in how I think about it. There are some tactical aspects too, which is maintaining the right momentum with kind of the right review teams and right reviewers at the NRC on different items of interest. Making sure you kind of have the right content in the right way and the right order to sort of deal with setting the stage for successful review is pretty important to focus on getting right. That's how we've tried to approach it.

That's kind of how we've set the stage for executing into that. I think like doing a, you know, doing a custom 52 approach is a lot of 52. Yes, they reference the design certification, but there's a lot of one-offs in between them and even differences in how they kind of looked at the actual plant build on a site-by-site basis to some degrees. Given what we're trying to do here, that full approach, we don't see any significant departure from risk. It's not like we're taking a part 53 licensing approach or something like that. This is a part 52 combined license, just kind of putting those together. What's nice about that is we don't have to deal with the pains of regulatory rulemaking, which is what a design certification is.

From an actual administrative perspective, rulemaking is way harder than license issuance is from an evolution and development perspective because of what you have to do for rulemaking or how it's typically been done. At the end of the day, that's how we saw some of the advantages on that kind of approach. We kind of combine those things. Plus the scalability, it's really about, again, the subsequent licensing. This industry has done a lot, but we haven't had a lot of subsequent license. She did a lot of work already because we had a hard time getting through the first plants. Right now we're looking at seeing that those benefits come to bear. I think that's one of the cool things is the NRC has spent a lot of effort and time to be ready to do that. They did do a lot of that.

It's just they didn't get built. It's great that we can tap into doing a lot of that as well from a subsequent license application perspective, from the reference license application perspective.

Speaker 1

Okay, I appreciate it. Thanks.

Speaker 2

Next up is Maxwell Ayers Hopkins, CLSA.

Hello. Thanks for the time. I'll keep it brief. You guys mentioned the MOU with Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power. I want to touch on the supply chain. As you guys move forward, you said 70% of materials could be non-nuclear. For that 30% of nuclear required components, are you guys looking to Korea more, maybe BWXT in the U.S., or is there any focus on those nuclear-specific materials coming down the line?

Speaker 5

Yeah, it's a great question. I'll zoom out a level real quick because I think this is kind of a key narrative piece. There's a whole thing about, you know, nuclear having been expensive and difficult and all these other things for time to build and understand why and where that comes from. The real experience. We've also seen success stories through the things that people like to point to for big plants. There's another whole vector of attack here, which is what we, I think as an industry, need to think a lot more about, which is how we get back to realizing the true cost potential of nuclear. Look, there's the term I know, you know, we've used before.

I think it comes out of SpaceX and from Elon Musk, but was the idea of an idiot index of what's the, you know, ratio of the actual delivered cost of something divided by its actual cost of raw materials in. In nuclear, a lot of times those are really, really, really high multiples. A lot of that points to, for a lot of reasons, just kind of how things have been done in the industry. It's not how they have to be done because, again, nuclear has the fewest material needs per megawatt hour of all energy sources. There's a lot of room for cost improvement, frankly, just there. The way I see it, and in my experiences, and I think we've seen at Oklo and what we've tried, you know, designed towards, is there's kind of two main ways you attack that.

One is designing systems that have passive and inherent safety features that reduce the number of what are called "safety related" or "safety grade" or "nuclear grade" systems and components. That's one thing, right? Starting fast reactors based on what EBR2 showed have a good kind of trajectory on hitting those inherent and passive safety features. Then I have a lot fewer things that are required for the safety kind of functions in the plant. The other aspect is how you deliver, how you actually deliver the parts that need to fall under that kind of oversight or are maybe just unique enough because they're only supplied in nuclear. How do you modernize some of that? There's a whole bunch of opportunity there because in many ways, the nuclear supply chain went out of growth mode by and large in the 1970s and 1980s.

It has only now started to come back. When that happened, investing in modernizing the actual processes and procedures and protocols and even just methods of manufacture and fabrication, as well as quality assurance compliance, there wasn't a big impetus to do that because those changes can be expensive. We actually have a really big benefit and opportunity to take that and do it differently in a more fresh way today because of how you can work with doing sort of meeting those requirements in a more modern way. If you think about where the world was when those things happened, we were building a lot of, you know, Ford Pintos, to be candid, right? That was what was going on then. You have a different level of quality assurance, a different level of expectation at an industrial level.

In fact, I would argue that in many ways, industrial quality assurance has caught up, if not leapfrogged, kind of what typical nuclear has been, but done so in a much more efficient and effective way. You can obviously, and also the pathways by which you achieve the kind of functional outcomes and outputs can be done the same way with, like, you know, with these modern, you know, I mean, it's not exactly the same, but you can do commercial-grade dedication for these pathways to actually get them to meet what's required in the industry or from the regulatory basis and from the quality control basis. There's actually a lot of opportunity just from those two to drive a total change in cost, which then opens the door for how you think about the suppliers to meet that 30% mix of who fits into this.

Yes, some are going to be some legacy, but not a large pressurized water reactor. We're not even a small pressurized water reactor, which means we have a very different set of what we can buy and use in the plant. We don't need a pressure vessel because we're not pressurized, right? We can use common alloys of stainless that are used in many other industrial applications that are shown to be compatible in a sodium system. You kind of basically partner up and work with different folks, both legacy as well as some newer entrants who want to get into this business and help them kind of meet what's required and do so in a, I would say, a more cost-effective way. It's kind of an all-in, very comprehensive approach in how you attack this problem and do things a bit differently.

It's not the best, it's not always, it's not the worst always, but it's also not always the best to go to legacy incumbent suppliers because they're used to doing what they've done. Trying to get them to modernize can sometimes be challenging. You find the right ways to work with them, but sometimes it's just better to work with some others. A big focus has been, we have opportunities to partner, obviously, with what's been done. We don't need all the full capacity of what the Koreans can do, but obviously that means they can definitely do what we need them to do. There's interesting dynamics there. There's also interesting dynamics about different fabricators and factories in the U.S.

We found that some legacy providers and suppliers are really excited about modernizing, and they see us as a big pathway to do that because it can help them get experience of doing things in a more modern, efficient way to then also apply to the rest of the operations and maybe change their cost curves as well. At the end of the day, we see it being pretty attractive to do that and kind of push on that angle of attack. It's a long-winded answer that's deeply ingrained in Oklo's philosophy. Another thing is by building a lot of plants, you can kind of find an approach where maybe you find a couple of different partners for the same system.

Maybe not, it just depends, but it gives you that ability to then find the best ways and right ways to partner with folks to be able to buy things from and do so at the right cost or just partner in a way to help them do it with ourselves or us do it. It's a full dynamic about how you attack that problem. At the end of the day, it's quite helpful that we have, as I like to think about it, the physical cost drivers are generally on our side because we have such a material advantage as a nuclear technology as a whole. I'll just say changing that paradigm from a light water reactor, if you were a light water reactor, has different complications and challenges.

I would say in many ways can be harder than it is to do it from an advanced reactor perspective because light water reactors have a pretty specific way of doing things. If you're going to try to do something differently, given that that's the bulk of the plants operating today, there's a lot more inertia that's kind of resistant to that change or modernization or even just lack of appetite, a better way to do it than it is if you're a technology that doesn't have that same paradigm and can bridge outside of the sort of incumbent nuclear supply chains effectively. That's a big feature that sodium fast reactors have.

In some cases, I think they have a broader envelope of opportunity than kind of any other type of technology because of the material compatibility and the technology kind of operating temperatures and the history of operation on it. It's a little harder to do that also with gas reactors, I would contend, just because, again, pressurized, larger scale volumes, nuclear grade graphites, all that. It doesn't mean it can't be done. It's just a different attack perspective.

Speaker 1

Great, thank you.

Speaker 2

At this time, there are no further questions. I would like to hand the conference back to Mr. Jacob DeWitte, Oklo Inc.'s Chief Financial Officer, for any closing or additional remarks.

Speaker 5

Thank you so much. Thank you, everyone, for calling in today. I'm excited about the last quarter marked for us. A pretty sizable change in the entire nuclear landscape, including, frankly, the art of what's possible in the wake of the monumental changes made by President Trump and his executive orders built on massive changes already in hand that go back to President Biden and the Advance Act and work done around the Inflation Reduction Act to support nuclear. These go beyond and back before that to President Trump's first term with NECA, NEMA, and those bills, and additional executive orders signed then. Back before that, even to President Obama.

I could actually go on for a bit longer, but the reality is it's a very exciting time here in that we see a clear setup for a need for what nuclear has to offer, policy support that helps solve some of the biggest challenges or risk factors, including permitting as well as fuel supplies. We're excited about watching how those fully unfold. That said, there's still obviously a lot of work to do to capitalize on this. It's frankly, as a person who grew up in this space and loves this technology and loves this field, it's pretty hard to not find myself sort of pinching myself to make sure this is the reality that we live in, that we have such a clear ecosystem of support and support in the most meaningful ways possible to actually go execute on realizing the real promise and potential of the atom.

Very excited about that, very excited about what we accomplished in the last quarter and looking forward to what's ahead because there's a lot more to do. Thank you guys. Thank you all.

Speaker 2

Once again, everyone, that does conclude today's conference. We would like to thank you all for your participation today. You may now disconnect.