Oklo - Earnings Call - Q4 2024

Executive Summary

• Q4 2024 EPS was -$0.09 versus S&P Global consensus of -$0.07, a miss, while revenue remained $0 in line with consensus expectations; FY 2024 EPS of -$0.74 was a major beat versus S&P consensus of -$4.81, largely reflecting the extraordinary Q2 deemed dividend effects that inflated consensus losses [Values retrieved from S&P Global]* .
• Oklo expanded its powerhouse capacity range to 15–75 MW and signed a master power agreement with Switch for 12 GW, bringing confirmed customer interest to ~14 GW, positioning nuclear baseload as an AI/data center power solution.
• Regulatory momentum continues: DOE site work and permits at INL, pre-app readiness engagement with NRC for the COLA submission in 2025, and first commercial power targeted for late 2027 to early 2028.
• FY 2024 operating loss was $52.8M (adjusted to $40.3M at the low end of prior guidance after non-cash items) and cash used in operations was $38.4M; year-end cash and marketable securities stood at $275.3M, underpinning execution capacity .
• Watch risk catalysts: Pomerantz shareholder litigation investigations following a short report in Nov-2024 contributed to sentiment volatility; management disclosed a 2024 10-K material weakness tied to complex SPAC accounting presentation, with remediation expected by year-end.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Expanded powerhouse output to 75 MW from the same 50 MW design platform, improving scalability for large AI/data center customers; “no new technical or design risk” to achieve larger output per call commentary.
• Landmark Switch master power agreement for 12 GW by 2044, elevating total pipeline to ~14 GW; “one of the largest corporate power agreements in history” with strategic collaboration beyond power delivery.
• Regulatory and project progress at INL: DOE environmental and siting milestones achieved with drilling/site characterization started; “on track for deployment in late 2027 to early 2028”.

What Went Wrong

• Q4 EPS missed S&P consensus (-$0.09 vs -$0.07), and Q3 also modestly missed (-$0.08 vs -$0.07), reflecting ongoing pre-revenue burn and extraordinary items in 2024 [Values retrieved from S&P Global]*.
• Legal overhang emerged with shareholder litigation investigations post short-seller report, creating headline risk and near-term stock pressure.
• A material weakness disclosure in the 2024 10-K related to infrequent, complex accounting tied to the SPAC deemed dividend presentation, though management expects remediation by year-end.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Thank you for standing by. My name is Karen, and I will be your conference Operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Oklo Q4 2024 financial results and Business Update call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, you may press star followed by the number one again. I'll now turn the call over to Sam Doane, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Sam Doane (Director of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Operator. Good day, everyone, and welcome to Oklo's Q4 and annual company update and earnings call. Joining me today are Jake DeWitte, Oklo's Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, and Craig Bealmear, Oklo's Chief Financial Officer. Earlier today, after market close, we announced our Q4 and full-year 2024 earnings. You can find our shareholder letter and supplemental slides on the Investor Relations page of our website. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that our discussion today, including our remarks and the Q and A session, will include forward-looking statements. These statements reflect our current views on trends, assumptions, risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from what we discuss today. We encourage you to review the forward-looking statements language in our shareholder letter and supplemental slides for additional context.

You can also find a discussion of relevant risk factors in our most recent SEC filings. Oklo assumes no obligation to update these 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 Jake DeWitte, Oklo's Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer. Jake.

Jake DeWitte (Co-Founder and CEO)

Thanks, Sam, and thank you all for joining us today. We're excited to share our quarterly and full-year update and provide insights into Oklo's progress over the past 12 months. Oklo was founded on the belief that there are significant opportunities for advanced nuclear technology. We saw an industry that had stagnated and recognized the need to rethink how new nuclear technologies could be brought to market. We started Oklo to seize this opportunity and fulfill our mission to deliver clean, reliable, and affordable energy on a global scale.

The momentum behind nuclear energy has never been stronger. The new administration has made it clear that nuclear power is a cornerstone of America's energy future, with direct policy actions and public endorsements supporting its expansion. Key voices in government and industry are reinforcing the need for advanced nuclear deployment. Energy Secretary and former Oklo Board Member Chris Wright stated that the long-awaited American nuclear renaissance must launch now. He said, we're at the start of Manhattan Project 2. It is critical, just like Manhattan Project 1, that the United States wins this race and has emphasized the administration's commitment through financial and regulatory support to enable rapid deployment and commercialization of next-generation nuclear technology. Additionally, President Trump has recently highlighted the advantages of small, scalable nuclear plants.

These statements reflect a growing consensus. Nuclear is essential for energy abundance, and small advanced nuclear reactors provide a practical, cost-effective path forward. The demand for power is growing at an unprecedented rate, and while AI-driven data centers are a major contributor, they are not the only source of this growth. This slide shows other sectors—residential, transportation, commercial, and industrial—are also driving sustained energy needs. Total U.S. power demand is projected to grow greater than 160% through 2030, with data centers contributing approximately 31% of this increase. We have demonstrated that Oklo is uniquely positioned to take advantage of this staggering potential growth. Our build, own, operate model and small, scalable powerhouse designs are well-suited for a broad range of applications, ensuring we can meet growing energy needs across multiple sectors.

At Oklo, our strategy is built on three core pillars that we believe will fundamentally transform how nuclear power is delivered to our customers. First is our business model. We've designed a model that simplifies the process for customers to purchase clean power at scale, eliminating traditional complexities and points of friction. Second is our reactor size. Our small, scalable reactors allow us to achieve greater capital efficiency while meeting customer demand incrementally. This approach not only optimizes our financial performance by creating a recurring revenue model but also delivers resilient and redundant power solutions, ensuring operational reliability. Finally, our technology sets us apart by utilizing technology backed by centuries of cumulative reactor operation experience. Our use of liquid sodium coolant provides significant economic and operational advantages. This technology underpins our ability to deploy advanced nuclear solutions that are both efficient and cost-effective.

2024 was a transformative year for Oklo, marked by major commercial, technological, and regulatory milestones. We started the year with a 500 MW partnership with Equinix, one of the largest colocation data center companies in the world, supported by a $25 million investment through the form of a prepayment. This really kicked off the partnership wave between nuclear technology companies and AI data center companies. Building on this momentum, we signed a letter of intent with Diamondback Energy for 50 MW, demonstrating an emerging demand for nuclear energy in the oil and gas sector. As companies seek long-term sustainable energy solutions to electrify their operations, we also expanded our presence in the data center space by signing a letter of intent with Prometheus Hyperscale to deliver 100 MW of clean power to next-generation AI infrastructure.

We ended the year by signing what is potentially the largest corporate clean Power Agreement ever with Switch for 12 GW of power. To put the magnitude of this agreement into perspective, that is equivalent to approximately 1% of the U.S. grid. This is a massive opportunity for us, not just because of the size of the power need, but for the multi-pronged partnership of Switch to work together to bring nuclear to market at scale. One highlight to me of this partnership is that building data centers has significant similarities to building small reactors. If you think about data centers, they are fixed civil assets into which prefabricated and manufactured components and systems are installed, and electrical and cooling systems are tied together to move power and heat through the system.

This has similarities to building small reactors, fixed civil facilities into which prefabricated and manufactured components are installed, and electrical and cooling systems are integrated and tied together. Working with Switch's expertise here will likely be accelerative to us, and we are excited about how this will progress. In May 2024, we went public on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker OKLO, a defining step in our growth. Beyond our commercial success, we made major progress in our regulatory strategy and in building our nuclear technology platform. Our Idaho National Lab or INL Powerhouse project remains on track to be the first commercial small nuclear reactor built in the U.S., with key DOE approvals and an environmental compliance permit secured. We also advanced our Aurora Fuel Fabrication Facility, receiving DOE approval for its safety design strategy, reinforcing our ability to produce advanced reactor fuel domestically.

Oklo is the only advanced nuclear company with high assay low-enriched uranium, also known as HALEU fuel, secured for its first deployment, a significant competitive advantage that ensures we can move forward without fuel supply chain delays. We also successfully demonstrated our end to end fuel recycling process, proving our ability to close the nuclear fuel cycle and leverage both fresh and recycled fuel for long term sustainability and growth. As we continue to execute on our strategy, we remain committed to keeping the market informed with clear and consistent updates on our progress. Our company updates are structured around six key focus areas: project execution, reactor licensing progress, fuel fabrication and recycling, customer pipeline development, strategic partnerships for corporate and business development, and financial updates. The last quarter was marked by major commercial, regulatory, and technology milestones that drive us toward commercialization.

To meet increasing customer demand, we expanded our powerhouse offering to support up to 75 MW of power output. Building on the same design architecture of the 50 MW powerhouse to deliver more power without changing our reactor design footprint or regulatory framework. The scalable platform strengthens our ability to serve energy-intensive industries efficiently. On the regulatory front, we continue to advance key approvals with the NRC and DOE, ensuring steady progress towards deployment. We are working with the NRC through pre-Application Readiness Assessment for our Aurora Powerhouse Combined License application at Idaho National Laboratory. Commercially, we signed a landmark 12 GW master Power Agreement with Switch, underscoring the growing demand for reliable carbon-free baseload power and positioning Oklo at the forefront of the energy transition. We're also strengthening our capabilities through strategic partnerships.

Our agreement with RPower provides near-term natural gas solutions as a bridge to nuclear, offering customers flexible energy options that can accelerate timeframes. Additionally, our MOU with Lightbridge explores co-locating commercial fuel fabrication and recycling, reinforcing our long-term fuel strategy. Beyond power generation, we've expanded into the high-value radioisotope market with the completion of our Atomic Alchemy acquisition. It continues to make progress towards near-term radioisotope opportunities and in the regulatory pre-application work to deploy their VIPER reactor. We're also driving next-generation materials innovation through collaborations with the DOE and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. With strong financial positioning, scalable technology, and growing customer demand, we enter 2025 with clear momentum, accelerating toward deployment and cementing Oklo as a leader in the advanced nuclear space. Over the years, we've made significant progress in refining our Powerhouse platform.

We initially developed both 15 MW and 50 MW designs, but it consolidated our approach around a 50 MW architecture. This allowed us to scale power output efficiently by simply adjusting things like fuel load and heat exchangers. With this approach, we can flexibly deliver between 15 MW and 75 MW from the same design platform, adapting to different customer needs while maintaining a streamlined supply chain and regulatory approach. The decision to scale up to 75 MW was driven by demand characteristics from large energy users, particularly data centers. This power range aligns well with the infrastructure of these customers, including at the data hall level, and it reduces the number of reactors needed to support GW-scale projects. We anticipate the majority of our plants will operate in the 60 MW-75 MW range. Importantly, this update does not introduce new technical, regulatory, or design risk.

We're leveraging the same core technology, optimizing it to deliver more power while maintaining the benefits of a compact, repeatable system by focusing on design flexibility, scalability, and cost efficiency. Oklo continues to provide innovative and capital-efficient nuclear power solutions to meet the evolving needs of our customers. Oklo continues to make steady progress on our first commercial Aurora Powerhouse at the Idaho National Laboratory, or INL. We are actively engaging with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission through a pre-application readiness assessment for our Aurora Powerhouse Combined License application at Idaho National Laboratory. This process enables NRC staff to review and familiarize themselves with Oklo's licensing materials ahead of the formal application submission, streamlining regulatory review and positioning us for an efficient approval process. We have submitted our Licensed Operator Topical Report, a key step in enabling our fleet-based licensing approach.

This approach lowers costs, accelerates deployment, and enhances operational efficiency. Beyond licensing, we have begun drilling, testing, and site characterization efforts at INL. Critical steps toward construction. Backed by a DOE site use permit, the project remains on track for deployment in late 2027 to early 2028 at Oklo. Our business model and licensing strategy provide a more streamlined regulatory pathway compared to conventional nuclear approaches. Rather than pursuing separate construction and operating licenses or obtaining a design certification or DC, which is not a license or permit, to then later license out to customers who then have to obtain the actual commercial permits and or licenses, we take a direct path by securing a Combined License or COL. This single-step approval allows us to build and operate without additional regulatory hurdles.

Unlike the DC process, which requires multiple and separate NRC reviews, and unlike the part 50 approach, which requires separate NRC reviews and approvals for construction and operation, the COL includes all key NRC specific reviews upfront. This integrated approach eliminates duplicative reviews and accelerates deployment. Ultimately, only after completing these regulatory steps can a company begin construction, operate a plant, and generate power and revenue. Oklo's approach ensures that we reach those milestones faster and with greater certainty. As I just alluded to, what sets Oklo apart is our direct-to-COL approach, which we secure a Combined License in one streamlined process. Whereas others in the industry pursue design certification or construction permits first, requiring separate construction and operating approvals later, we believe this makes our approach faster, more efficient, and more aligned with deployment.

Because we build, own, and operate our powerhouses rather than selling designs or licenses, streamlining regulatory approval under a single process makes strategic sense. Securing our first COL will also serve as a Referenced License and RCOL, allowing future applications and SCOL to focus only on site-specific differences, greatly reducing approval timelines. By minimizing those differences, we can gain faster regulatory approvals for each additional plant, enabling rapid scaling. This approach not only simplifies licensing but strengthens our ability to bring advanced nuclear power to market faster and more efficiently than traditional models. Our path with Idaho paves the way for future sites through Subsequent Combined Licenses, reducing review timelines under the ADVANCE Act and accelerating deployment at scale. Oklo's licensing strategy is not just about getting approval. It's about getting to multiple powerhouses to deployment, operation, and revenue generation faster than conventional approaches.

At Oklo, we have built deep expertise in working with both the NRC and DOE, making significant regulatory progress as we move toward deploying our first commercial Aurora Powerhouse. We completed key pre-application work with the NRC, including safety analysis, operational programs, and environmental siting. Additionally, we submitted fleet-based Licensed Operators and staffing methodology topical reports, important milestones that enable a standardized fleet-wide staffing model. Unlike traditional nuclear plants, which require site-specific operator licensing, our approach improves efficiency, reduces costs, and accelerates deployment. Alongside our energy progress, we are working closely with the DOE since our first commercial Powerhouse will be deployed. At the Idaho National Lab, we finalized a memorandum of agreement with DOE granting Oklo access to begin critical site investigations, a major step that allows us to conduct essential groundwork to prepare for construction.

With this approval, we have begun site characterization activities, including drilling to study soil and rock conditions. Looking ahead, we are advancing the quality assurance program description for design, construction, and operations, which is currently in progress. These milestones reinforce Oklo's strong regulatory momentum and clear path to deployment. Each step moves us closer to our goal of delivering advanced nuclear power through streamlined, efficient regulatory approach. Additionally, the NRC is actively advancing the implementation of the ADVANCE Act, which is modernizing the regulatory landscape for advanced nuclear. The key component of this effort is a significant reduction in licensing fees, making regulatory processes more accessible and cost-effective for advanced reactor developers. The NRC has proposed cutting the hourly rate by nearly 55% for advanced reactor applicants. This change, set to take effect on October 1st, 2025, directly lowers the financial burden of licensing.

Securing fuel is a critical priority for Oklo, and we continue to make strong progress. We have successfully secured fuel for our first core load at INL through a competitive selection process and are expanding access for future deployments. Our MOU with Centrus establishes a long-term HALEU supply, ensuring a scalable domestic source. It is important to highlight Centrus is already producing HALEU today and continues to scale their production. Beyond securing fuel, we are also collaborating with Lightbridge, who's developing next-generation light water reactor fuels. We are exploring opportunities where Lightbridge could manufacture their fuel at our fuel fabrication facility, given we are both fabricating metallic fuel forms. Furthermore, we are working together on our recycling activities and evaluating the benefits of recycling used Lightbridge fuel into our reactors. With that, I'll turn it over to Craig for customer development, Atomic Alchemy, and financial updates.

Craig Bealmear (CFO)

Thank you, Jake. Oklo's powerhouses are purpose-built to meet the growing energy needs of numerous customer segments, including AI data centers. As Jake has already highlighted, our 50 MW design now offers the flexibility to deliver up to 75 MW of power, demonstrating our modular power offering can scale with customer demand and enabling Oklo to meet higher customer capacity with fewer deployments. We expect Oklo powerhouses to have construction timelines of less than 18 months, providing a very competitive time to market option for nuclear reactors, and our cost-oriented design and engineering provides customers with competitive pricing. Oklo is capable of providing data centers with high reliability through the development of redundant powerhouse facilities and can deploy multiple powerhouse facilities to a single site that matches the phased deployment approach of data center campuses.

Finally, Oklo's small land footprint enables the company to pursue a co-location model that provides customers with greater site flexibility and competing alternatives. Moving to our next slide, I would like to highlight two product features that are really resonating with data center customers. Phased deployment reliability. The first product feature that our large customers like about Oklo's powerhouse approach is the ability to build and deploy multiple small powerhouses in parallel rather than relying on a single large-scale plant with long lead times. This phased and modular expansion capability allows us to better align with specific customer timelines and capacity requirements. Our data center customers absolutely love the phased scaling capabilities of multiple reactor projects.

Moving to the next slide, I will talk about the second product feature that resonates with our data center customers, which is our ability to build in redundant powerhouses to achieve greater than 99% reliability. Reliability is critical for AI-driven data centers, which operate 24/7 and require constant, uninterrupted power. Even brief outages can result in significant data loss, service disruptions, and financial consequences. Unlike large-scale reactors that can experience complete shutdowns for maintenance, our modular powerhouses are designed so that routine or even unexpected maintenance on one unit does not impact overall system performance. When there is more than one facility built on site, this built-in redundancy can enable behind-the-meter operations as well as reducing the size of the customer's interconnect with the grid. I would now like to talk about our relationship with Switch.

Our product market fit with the data center industry continues to be validated through major customer announcements. In December 2024, Oklo announced it had secured one of the largest corporate Power Agreements in history, a 12 GW Master Power Agreement with Switch that is to be deployed through 2044. For context, this is equivalent to 1% of the U.S. grid capacity. Switch is a leader in designing, building, and operating cutting-edge modular and scalable data center campuses. Their facilities support the most demanding AI, cloud, and enterprise clients requiring reliable and sustainable power solutions. Switch has been a leader in clean power procurement and believes nuclear is critical to the future of AI data center development and operations.

This agreement is an example of putting a Master Partnership Agreement in place and is the result of extensive collaboration to understand Switch's needs and tailor a solution that ensures long-term energy reliability. It underscores Oklo's role in powering next-generation data infrastructure while establishing a significant long-term revenue stream beyond just power delivery. This partnership lays the foundation for broader collaboration, aligning Oklo's investment strategy, government and public affairs efforts, and supply chain optimization efforts to support large-scale deployment with a strategic customer. We often get asked why Oklo hasn't signed our Purchase Agreements or PPAs. The answer is that Oklo is taking a measured approach to reduce risk to the company and get the most attractive terms for the company and our investors. We are looking to implement a comprehensive risk mitigated strategy, customer acquisition, and project execution.

On the previous slide, I talked about the Master Power Agreement or MPA that we have in place with Switch. Today, we are signing NPAs with customers that establishes a framework for the overall partnership. Once a Master Power Agreement is established, we use it as a platform for multiple partnership elements, which include power sales, corporate and asset investment, supply chain optimization, and public relations and permitting. The Master Power Agreement also establishes the starting point for PPA negotiations. NPAs start to define potential target sites or regions, total and phase power delivery, timing of capacity additions, and a pricing range. With this framework established, Oklo can begin site feasibility analysis with customers and start specific PPA negotiations. In addition, this structure lives and iterates as the market evolves and is not limited to customers.

We are applying this structure with parties across our value chain from fuel supply to component manufacturing, creating a repeatable and scalable model for asset deployment that should enable Oklo to move quickly while maintaining capital efficiency. As a result of our efforts over the last 18 months, Oklo's customer pipeline has expanded significantly, driven primarily by growing data center demand. We signed agreements across key customer segments with demand shifting towards our 75 MW powerhouse offer to meet large-scale AI-powered needs. Our pipeline has grown from 700 MW at the announcement of our business combination with AltC to over 14 GW today, supported by major customers like Equinix, Prometheus, Switch, and Diamondback Energy. As the market accelerates, we continue to advance discussions with additional customers to further expand our pipeline.

I'd now like to talk about our partnership with RPower. Oklo and RPower are partnering to bridge the gap between today's power needs and the transition to advanced nuclear. This phased model ensures data centers secure reliable power now while seamlessly moving towards clean long-term energy solutions. The approach has three phases. Phase I: immediate power deployment. RPower's natural gas generators should be in a position to be deployed within 24 months to meet urgent demand opportunities. Phase II: transition to advanced nuclear. As Oklo's Aurora Powerhouses come online, they will integrate into these sites, delivering new clean baseload power. Phase III: long-term energy resilience. Over time, Aurora Powerhouses will become the primary energy source, with RPower's generators shifting to an auxiliary power delivery role. This enhances grid stability, allowing RPower to act as a good grid citizen.

With Oklo supplying surplus power when needed, this approach meets urgent power needs today while enabling a clean, scalable energy future. We have successfully closed the $25 million acquisition of Atomic Alchemy. This transaction marks Oklo's strategic expansion into the high-growth radioisotope market. We view this as an extremely attractive bolt-on acquisition that enhances Oklo's nuclear technology platform and diversifies our customer base to include critical industries such as space, defense, industrial applications, medical diagnostics, and semiconductor manufacturing. This acquisition is not expected to have material near-term operating cost increases for Oklo and does have the potential to accelerate revenues to the company through the sale of radioisotopes. This transaction was primarily funded via stock and represented less than 1% of dilution to Oklo shareholders. Additionally, shares issued to the Atomic Alchemy founders are subject to multi-year revesting to drive strong long-term alignment.

The next slide focuses on some acquisition highlights. Atomic Alchemy will enhance Oklo's technology portfolio and serve as a Standalone Radioisotope business with significant market potential. Acquisition highlights include the massive market demand with limited supply. The radioisotope market is projected to exceed $55 billion by 2026, with applications spanning medical imaging, cancer therapies, space and defense, and next-generation semiconductor manufacturing. Meanwhile, aging facilities are struggling to keep up with demand, creating a critical supply gap. Benefits to Oklo's energy and fuel business. Collecting high-value radioisotopes from recycling co-products enhances the economics of fuel recycling. Third, growth opportunities. We are already exploring joint ventures with customers in radiopharmaceuticals and advanced silicon doping for semiconductor manufacturing, positioning Oklo for long-term success and in high-growth industries. Fourth and finally, revenue and milestone acceleration. Radioisotopes are among the most valuable materials on Earth.

Take Actinium225 for example, which sells for $400 per nanogram or an astonishing $400 billion per gram. With our recent acquisition of Atomic Alchemy, we are positioning Oklo to capitalize on this high-margin market. Our radioisotope demonstration project is already underway, and we could begin generating revenue as early as the Q1 of 2026, unlocking significant near-term value for our business. This acquisition is a true force multiplier, accelerating our entry into the radioisotope sector. We are excited about the opportunities ahead and confident in the value this can create for our shareholders. Thank you. I'd now like to talk about recent Board appointments. With Chris Wright's confirmation as the new U.S. Secretary of Energy, Oklo needed to fill an open board seat.

In doing so, we took the opportunity to strengthen our board by adding not just one but two exceptional leaders, Daniel Poneman and Michael Thompson. Daniel Poneman brings Daniel decades of experience in nuclear energy and national security. Most recently, he served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Centrus Energy, leading the company to profitability and deploying the first U.S.-based technology uranium enrichment facility since 1954. Before that, Dan was Deputy Secretary of Energy, overseeing energy technology and nuclear security and playing a critical role in international nuclear negotiations and U.S. energy security policies. Michael Thompson adds significant experience in capital markets and technology investments. As Managing Partner at Reinvent Capital, he has worked with some of the most innovative technology companies.

Previously, he founded and led EHR Capital, a New York-based hedge fund, and has served as an investor and board advisor across multiple high-growth sectors. With these additions, Oklo's board is well-positioned to guide the company through its next phase of growth, ensuring strong governance as we execute on our strategy to deliver advanced nuclear power. I'll now provide a summary of our financials. Oklo's full-year operating loss was $52.8 million. This included a one-time fair market value expense of $7.8 million related to earn-out shares payable to Oklo staff who held vested options at the time of SPAC closing, as well as $4.7 million of non-cash stock-based compensation expense.

When adjusting for these non-cash amounts that were not included in our original 2024 budget, you get to $40.3 million, which is at the low end of our forecasted range of $40-$50 million. In preparing our year-end consolidated financials, Oklo made two changes related to the accounting presentation associated with our business combination with AltC that occurred in the Q2 of 2024. First, management received additional guidance that led us to reduce the fair market value of our SAFE notes at the closure by $2.1 million, improving our full-year net loss to $73.6 million. Second, we were directed that the tabular presentation of the deemed dividend on our quarterly income statement for earnout and founder shares was not required, as this was already covered in the accompanying footnotes. We elected to reflect this as a material weakness in section 9B.

Other information in our 10K for 2024 in the area of infrequent and complex accounting, it should be noted that these changes come from our business combination transaction that closed in the Q2 and actually result in improvement to our financial statements. By minimizing our net loss attributable to common stockholders from a loss of $563 million to a loss of $73.6 million, we are working to address this material weakness and expect to have it remediated by year end. Oklo's full-year cash used in operating activities was $38.4 million. This balance is derived from a net loss of $73.6 million, partially offset by $40.4 million in non-cash impacts. These non-cash impacts included $27.9 million of fair market value charges associated with the previously converted SAFE notes, as well as non-cash stock-based compensation charges of $12.5 million.

Finally, at the end of the year cash and marketable securities were at $275.3 million, primarily driven by the $276 million in proceeds and fees received at the closing of our business combination. This cash balance generated approximately $7.7 million in interest income in 2024. Looking forward to 2025, we expect the cash used in operations to be in the range of $65 million-$80 million this year. On year growth from 2024 is driven by increases in headcount, initiation of procurement activities in support of our first powerhouse at the Idaho National Lab, Licensed application fees, progressing activities in support of fuel recycling, and a small increase resulting from our recently acquired Atomic Alchemy business. To close, we believe there are six factors that make Oklo such a compelling investment proposition.

First, technology and size that are based on proven fast reactor technologies that we look to deploy at scale to reduce complexity, cost, and time delivery. Second, an attractive business model that is customer-oriented and enables recurring revenue and profits. Third, superior economics that can deliver power at competitive cost. Fourth, a diverse and growing customer base with interest across multiple market sectors. Fifth, a streamlined approach to regulatory approval underpinned by our Combined License application process that leverages years of experience in our work with the NRC. Finally, a well-capitalized balance sheet that positions us well for the implementation of our business strategy. With that, I would like to thank you for your time. Jake and I will now open up the call for questions. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. We ask that you please limit your question to one and one follow-up. We will pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. The first question comes from Ryan Pfingst from B. Riley. Your line is open.

Ryan Pfingst (Analyst)

Hey guys, thanks for taking my questions. First, was the decision to go from 50 MW to 75 MW driven by customers you already have in your pipeline or potential customers you're talking to today? Do you see obvious benefits for your economics with the greater output?

Jake DeWitte (Co-Founder and CEO)

Yeah, thanks, Ryan. A lot of it is built off of, you know, kind of what we're seeing in the market, come together from the customer interest set that where we see sort of the data center architectures progressing. There's a sweet spot that kind of lives between 50 MW and 75 MW, and probably more of it really between 60 MW and 72 MW, probably more specifically. In that range, that's really well targeted at our site, like basically being at that size matches really well where we see kind of that range existing.

It just made sense given that we have some latent extra capacity just through the design process for margin to be able to go up that high and provide that flexibility and do that now rather than kind of, you know, sort of trim, like basically keep the system more, say, you know, targeted at 50 and limits of the upside. We just kind of unlock that in there and focus on making sure we can get up all that all the way to that number. Pretty much a customer-informed, designed, you know, kind of, I would say, decision if that makes sense. Just to be a little more specific, you might, you know, people talk about GW-scale data centers, and that is awesome and exciting to see how that is going to come together.

Many of the actual buildings that make up a campus, because it's really going to be a campus that makes up a GW scale, these kind of buildings, these structures are smaller than that and the sort of sub unit or, if you will, in those actual like data center buildings by themselves is really this kind of data hall architecture as we refer to it, is really living in that kind of 50 MW-75 MW range, which is why we decided to go to that. You know, each different customer set has their own design, their own approach. It does kind of have some range on that, but given kind of the lower relative parts of the CapEx for us on the plant that's non-fuel related, it gives us a little more flex to accommodate that.

We just size the core accordingly to make sure we match and live with what we need to do between sort of that 15 MW-75 MW range. Generally speaking, I think we're going to see some general convergence that increasingly moves that number to exist pretty well between that 60 MW and sort of just basically 75 MW number. It works pretty, pretty favorably to tie into what they need at their core, as well as heating and cooling loads at those sizes.

Craig Bealmear (CFO)

Ryan, it's Craig. There will be some, you know, absolute economic benefits as well because just, you know, on the surface, if we have a customer wants 150 MW of power delivered, it now moves that from three powerhouses at 50 MW to two powerhouses at 75 MW. And so there'll be some economies of scale there.

Ryan Pfingst (Analyst)

Got it. I appreciate that detail, and I'll stick to the customer side. Now that you have a pipeline of 14 GW, do other potential customers see that and think, you know, Oklo is pretty full, I better seek out power elsewhere? Or are your discussions progressing at the same pace following your announcement of the Switch agreement?

Jake DeWitte (Co-Founder and CEO)

Yeah, I think, I mean, generally speaking, I think it actually in some ways kind of accelerates for some because now it's like, oh shoot, like, you know, we want to, we don't want to miss out on this. You don't want to lose out on this.

You know, our kind of dynamic with customers and our engagement, as Craig talked about, is iterative based on, you know, what makes the most sense to engage folks when you know, when and how, and kind of bring a little bit more to the table accordingly. At the end of the day, I think there's a bit of scarcity effect that is existent now, and I imagine will probably increase. Generally speaking, that's going to be pretty positive to us. You know, then accordingly we'll kind of see how that unfolds as things progress. In terms of what there might be, an effect on some folks being like, oh, that's pretty, you know, but okay, Oklo might be pretty full up.

I think what we see is more folks being like, okay, we want to get in to try to figure out how to work with you guys. Also, what can we do to help expand that bandwidth and capacity? There is, you know, you can do more. I think that's a little bit of a more begets more here. That's really how we're trying to, like, structure, you know, how and who we work with.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Jeffrey Campbell from Seaport Research. Your line is open.

Jeffrey Campbell (Analyst)

Good afternoon and congratulations on pretty strong year. Jake, regarding the increased range of the powerhouse from 50 MW-75 MW, does this require any kind of change in your total license approach, or is this already covered, or what kind of effect is there?

Jake DeWitte (Co-Founder and CEO)

Yeah, and really try to keep it so that it's a pretty minimal effect in general, like this. Everything we're doing to support kind of going to the 50 MW.

Yes.

Basically is accommodating to this. There are, of course, a few things that we need to be mindful of, but in general, like all the infrastructure and everything we have and all the design and analysis work, all those kind of things accommodate this pretty well. If you think about what this is really doing, is this is giving us a platform that allows us to go between 50 MW and 75 MW. That's pretty unconventional nuclear, because people, again, typically think of very fixed, heavy CapEx of the plant dominating the cost profile. You want to maximize the power output. Because of the benefits of, you know, what liquid sodium affords you, in kind of our design approach, you actually have a little more flex on that side and you become more, you know, a little bit more sensitive and driven by the fuel side, relatively speaking.

That gives you some more room then to say, okay, if I need to be at 50 MW, here's the number I'll be at. If I need to be at 75 MW, here's the number I'll be at. Because I have, you know, less fuel and more fuel, respectively, and that gives you that flexibility then to match customer demand. Some of the economic side, as Craig said, of course, there is some benefits on the 75 MW just because you kind of get a scaling benefit on fuel efficiency getting a little bit bigger. At the end of the day, all of these sizes kind of keep us inside of a nice realm where the work we're doing on the licensing side carries over. That's also a reason why staying at this size range is important for us. You know, as you.

If you do get much bigger here, you do start to dip into a world where some of the, a lot like you'll start needing to do more things that kind of go outside of the envelope of what we've been doing on the regulatory front to date. Those are very intentional to be mindful about those considerations and works out pretty well. You know, we're in this kind of sweet spot on the market right now.

Craig Bealmear (CFO)

Jeff, we counted through the slides pretty quickly, but if you go back to slide 10, it does talk about no new technical or design risk to achieve the larger power output, which is pretty important.

Jeffrey Campbell (Analyst)

Okay, great. I'll stick with one more regulatory question. Can you describe broadly what the readiness assessment entails, and does it de-risk your actual COLA application to any extent?

Jake DeWitte (Co-Founder and CEO)

Yeah, it's a great question. How we're approaching, you know, our application on this go is it's kind of a structured submission of a phase I and a phase II where you're putting in sort of this initial work on siting, environmental, and some other, you know, dynamics that were being evaluated there. Ahead of that, we're doing a readiness assessment, which is an optional kind of thing you can do with the NRC to basically do a pre-review. It's something we've intended to do as kind of a key takeaway and lesson learned from our prior regulatory experience and leading up to this, because it's continual and dynamic to basically make sure we're all sort of working on the same page. It pre-converges us. It pre-converges the NRC to kind of have a good, efficient review process accordingly.

That's been a pretty clear point of benefit based on some recent regulatory actions by the NRC, that the readiness assessment is supportive of that. Yeah, it's a way to de-risk both the content, the timeline of the review, and position everyone for not just success, but more efficiency as a result. That's how we're approaching this to lead into that review here. It's pretty exciting stuff for us to come here next week.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Vikram Bagri from Citi. Your line is open.

Vikram Bagri (Analyst)

Hi, thanks for taking a question. It's Ted on for Vic. Just wanted to follow up on that. Is there any initial feedback you could share on your discussions with the NRC?

As you work towards that pre-application readiness assessment?

Just in terms of, kind of, you know, how many meetings you've been having, what sort of discussions you're having.

In terms of timing, I.

Think the letter mentioned that you're expecting the COLA to be submitted this year. Is the plan to do that once.

Certain aspects of the ADVANCE Act become effective.

Should we be expecting that sometime?

In the Q4?

Jake DeWitte (Co-Founder and CEO)

Yeah, so, yeah, I mean, the engagement with the NRC is pretty continual. I don't, you know, I don't actually have the latest number in terms of the total tally of meetings we've had, but it's, you know, it's like over between meetings and report submissions, everything. That's over 600 since we started working with them back in 2016. And the number is almost changing. It is changing pretty much by the week. Yeah, I mean, basically, you know, what all this work is for is, right, we're developing application to Content. What that is is really saying, okay, here's how we're going to meet the regulatory requirements that are outlined in the Code of Federal Regulations.

You know, making sure that that is, you know, the NRC is able to spend some time understanding that and then using that to inform how they're going to do their independent safety analysis and their independent review that they have to do. Spending some time to kind of work through that and then at the readiness assessment put them in a position where they go through the exercises to be like, okay, here's what we, here's, here's the actual sort of approach we need in the review to make sure that everything is in place and filled in accordingly is incredibly valuable. You know, hitting phase I with that here is going to be super useful to then move quickly into submitting the application thereafter.

One reference point that I think is important here is Terraform's construction permit work is, you know, they did a readiness assessment and relatively quickly thereafter submitted a construction permit. There's been recent news that the NRC has had a schedule on. You can see why, like, that's a very, and that's, you know, it's a very similar technology set to ours. This is why doing this for a COLA is probably even more valuable, which is why we're doing it. To the rest of your question, yeah, we're targeting submitting the rest of the full COLA by the end of the year. The timeline is going to depend a bit on sort of how the readiness assessment feedback, you know, affects sort of the timing of the phase I submission.

Most likely, you know, we, I mean, given that the ADVANCE Act takes effect on October 1st, it's gonna, you know, we're targeting Q4 just because the benefits of that are pretty important to be fully scoped under.

Vikram Bagri (Analyst)

Got it. That's very helpful. Just in terms of the OpEx outlook for this year, just kind of.

Curious, like, what are the main drivers there? How should we be thinking about cash from operations this year relative to last?

With that lower hourly fee rate from the NRC? Is that factored into the OpEx outlook as well?

Craig Bealmear (CFO)

Yeah, so it's Craig. So I gave a range of $65 million-$80 million. And incorporated in that range is the potential, is the upside that we get from the lower NRC fees. But those really do not go in effect until October. That is probably more of a next year impact than a this year impact. You know, in terms of what are going to be the uses of that increase, now we can continue to bring on more staff. You know, Jake talked in his portion of the slides around the work we are doing at INL to get the site ready for deployment. We are continuing to advance things on the recycling front and seeing activity scale up there.

You know, I think I said at the last update that we expected Atomic Alchemy to add, you know, circa $3 million-$6 million to our overall burn rate. You know, we're still very much within that range post-deal completion.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Eric Stine from Craig-Hallum. Your line is open.

Eric Stine (Analyst)

Hi, Jake.

Hi, Craig. Hey.

Hey. Earlier question, just talking about scarcity value as your pipeline fills up. Just want to take it a step further. I'm curious, you know, how has that kind of changed discussions or driven discussions around prepayments, such as you've got with Equinix? I mean, is that something that counterparties out there are looking at as a way to potentially, you know, get up further in line, secure a spot. Just curious how that's playing out.

Jake DeWitte (Co-Founder and CEO)

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I think, you know, what we're learning and it's been interesting is one, you know, each customer has different, you know, I would say different things that matter to them and different tools in their toolbox accordingly.

While what Craig, like the important thing about what we've learned and how we've adapted kind of our engagement with them, as Craig pointed to, we definitely could have jumped into signing some PPAs and probably left a lot of value for everybody on the table accordingly. Right. It is important for us to kind of scope out what makes the most sense for everybody through how we can structure Master Partnership Agreement and find different ways to work with folks. You know, I think the flavor of that is of that kind of prepayment or similar structures is going to take a lot of different. I'm going to phrase that, it's going to have a lot of different flavors based on what we're learning so far.

You know, everything from prepayment like we saw directly there, to the potential for, you know, strategic investment as a possibility if that makes sense for both parties. There's some reasons that may or may not make sense for all of us. Of course, the possibility of, you know, sort of off-balance sheet kind of joint venture approaches, the possibility of direct supply chain procurement, the possibility of land lease, and in-kind of value kind of work like that. Even, even just the actual in-kind value of doing work like engineering siting and different work like that. I mean, that's one of the things that the Switch deal I'm particularly excited about that I think is kind of a little bit underappreciated because, you know, it's, it's, it's a huge opportunity. I mean, 12 GW is a hard number to get your head around.

The reality is like their position for all this massive, right, growth given kind of their positioning in the industry and their leadership, especially in high-density compute, but their attention to detail and their focus on how they do design, engineering, procurement, construction, and that we. I was captivated by that the first time I met them and how similar I saw some of what they do is to what we do and as a result like the ability to kind of, I'm going to use the term co-accelerate deployment by working with them and tapping into their engineering capabilities resource, you know, on the sort of full stack engineering, procurement, construction side is really helpful for us. I mean, it's the preconditioning and acceleration of working with a group that's actively already building a lot of facilities that has some direct carryover.

It can be difficult to overstate the value of that. Right. Being able to slide into some of those pieces and work towards those sites is very promising and very exciting. There is a lot of in-kind value that comes off that does not show up directly on the balance sheet but helps accelerate everything across the board, you know, in that sense. Accordingly, I think there are a lot of flavors, and each customer has different, you know, different tools in a toolbox and a different appetite accordingly. Our view is just working with the ones that kind of help us maximize value for everybody and help us get a position to do what actually needs to get done, which is build. Build plants and produce power, and then have them use the power. That is what we are ultimately working towards.

Since there are several different initial steps that can help us get there, this Master Power Agreement structure allows us to define those partnerships and structure them, and then iteratively grow those things. The more you get to know a site and a customer, the more you find that certain levers are higher impact than other levers, and you want to work with them to pull accordingly. It is kind of a long-winded answer, but that is how we are seeing it structured out. There is definitely the opportunity for that and other types of things that have a similar kind of upside benefit.

Eric Stine (Analyst)

Yep, that was a great, great answer.

Thank you for that.

Maybe just for my follow up.

Just on Atomic Alchemy, you mentioned potential that we see revenues initial in Q1 2026, and you mentioned the demonstration project. Could you just lay out some of the signposts to look for, you know, so we can kind of track if in fact, you know, things are on track for that 1Q 26 or you know, any of the factors that might push that out a bit.

Jake DeWitte (Co-Founder and CEO)

Yeah, you know, there's. This is a fun part of the business that's going to have a lot of upside as kind of continual illumination occurs here from the sort of, you know, just like edification perspective is what I mean with that.

I think, you know, there's a couple watch points of how that's going to progress accordingly with different, you know, progress at their facilities and capabilities that build out with what they're doing out in Idaho, potentially other sites, and then also their ability to source some of these different materials and tap into that and then couple that within. You know, if you think about what they're doing, there's a couple main major kind of points of value creation they have. Right. One is on being able to do the kind of near-term work. The other is like, like you know, pull out some existing materials from other, you know, existent sort of reserves of radionuclides that are kind of untapped or like, you know, priorly used sources and radiotherapy devices.

The other is, you know, the opportunity to actually directly produce with their own reactor design and approach is very different than a power reactor. It is very cool to see how this stuff works. Basically, you build a reactor, that main product is neutrons, and then you put material in that reactor to absorb neutrons and turn into other elements. I mean it literally is alchemy, which is what's so cool about neutrons. That produces incredibly high-value materials. One of the things we really like about their approach is they're leveraging very mature technology sets. They're not trying to build these hyper-exotic designs on the reactor side that give you the highest absolute performance, but at a marginally massive cost.

That's something that's easy to fall into because, you know, the marginal economics, the unit economics on some of these materials are so high it's like, oh, I may as well, you know, I can pay for building out sort of this like Lamborghini of a reactor when really you just need like a Ford F-150. Maybe that's not the best analogy. Maybe better to pick a Toyota Camry, but like use a simpler, cheaper machine that gets you 20%-80% of what you need, but does it, you know, in bulk and you get it built a lot faster and need a lot less CapEx to get it built. That's another angle for potential future growth.

Some of the regulatory developments and milestones that come there are going to be important. Additionally, there is going to be sort of the ability to tap into the things we are doing on the recycling side, pull out some of what would otherwise be byproducts, and turn them into co-products from our recycling process. Another thing that is a little bit underappreciated, but goes back to the legacy of fast reactors, is really cool. One of the plants we derive our legacy from is called the Fast Flux Test Facility in Washington State. That actually was a fast reactor, starting fast reactor, a lot of similar attributes to what we are doing. It did a lot of really cool things in terms of isotope production. There are some unique things you can do for high-value isotope production in fast reactors.

Accordingly, we expect that some of our plants, the Idaho plant being a very good candidate for this, to have some extra flexibility baked into it to actually allow you to produce radioisotopes. They're already doing work at Idaho National Laboratory and in Idaho Falls. It is kind of a natural segue to produce additional revenue streams from that first plant with, you know, ISO production and sales from it. Like, very, you know, kind of cool combination of different features that come together that way. I would say, like, you know, there's going to be, you know, updates as we go forward on the quarterly side about sort of where the progress, and how that's tracking. Certain things are kind of, sorry, certain things are kind of in development on the sort of facility side.

Other things have some regulatory permitting milestones that will kind of come forward as those things kind of, you know, progress accordingly. It'll just be a point where we fold into our normal update, excuse me, cadence that we have.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Craig Shere from Tuohy Brothers. Your line is open.

Craig Shere (Director of Research)

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking questions. Did I hear correctly in response to Ryan's opening question that your 75 MW powerhouse would have similar non-fuel CapEx as the 50 MW design? As to Eric's question, does the more scaled plant design obviously increasing, you know, fuel needs and CapEx, including fuel, does that necessitate either front-loaded customer payments and or project equity participation if you're going to implement the faster scaled deployments? Finally, not only is capital an issue in your early years of commercialization, but, obviously, in the first two, three years, HALEU fuel is in more limited supply. Any thoughts of addressing accelerated HALEU requirements if you move more quickly to these upsized designs?

Jake DeWitte (Co-Founder and CEO)

Yeah, a bunch of questions. I'll try to get through unpacking each of those accordingly.

I mean, there's a bit of a higher, you know, CapEx between 50 MW and 75 MW if you, you know, go that way just because, you know, you have bigger heat exchangers, bigger turbines. You do have an increase in the CapEx across the board there. It typically is something that would scale favorably for you. Similarly, you know, this size range, you actually get more power per, you know, kilogram of fuel accordingly. There are some benefits accordingly that come that way. It gives us some more flexibility. That, you know, that's really just kind of margin improvement. Part of the main, like part of the other driver here. I mean, the main driver is matching this with customers. The other benefit, though, that happens this way is you are getting more megawatts, you know, basically for your fuel.

Given that fuel supply is a constraint, this gives us the flexibility to preserve the benefits of tapping into existing supply chains and capabilities for a lot of the componentry here and live within that realm and not get too bespoke and all of the upstream and downstream effects that happen if you do that right, including needing to put a lot more CapEx in the tooling and the upfront manufacturing and all those kinds of things. It avoids a lot of that by staying in these sizes, but also gives you that benefit of having a little bit more, actually just economic efficiency on the fuel side. At the end of the day, you can build more reactor, or you can build more megawatts. I'll actually really say you can build more gigawatts with less fuel accordingly.

That's part of one of the other drivers that's important here. Now, a natural question that comes as well. What if. Why don't you just go to like 100 MW? We always evaluate kind of different size points, but the reality is there's a lot of an inflection that occurs once you get above kind of the 75 MW range. That starts to complicate things up and downstream on supply chain that do put a lot more cost challenges, drivers, and uncertainties in play. Maybe in time that makes something, you know, something we'll continue to watch and see as we execute at what we're doing now to see if there's some added insights we get through execution that make those more either palatable, approachable, or, you know, want to do them.

We see a pretty, you know, favorable sweet spot that matches really well with where we see the bulk of our customer interest at this size range, and giving us the ability to execute against that accordingly. The thoughts about capital. Sorry, I feel like I kind of cut you off. Could you say that last part again? I'm sorry.

Craig Shere (Director of Research)

It was about capital, Jake. Yeah.

Because you have to front-load more cash back. Obviously, it's economic, but you have to come up with the money.

Craig Bealmear (CFO)

Yeah. Craig, it will add, you know, more front-end CapEx, but, you know, similar to what we saw when you go from 15 to 50 in materials, we showed it, you know, on our Investor Day Deck. It will improve in terms of the dollars per megawatt delivered. As Jake said, it is a much more efficient use of fuel and other things.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Max Hopkins from CLSA. Your line is open.

Max Hopkins (Analyst)

Hello. Thank you for the time question. On fuel, I see Daniel Poneman from Centrus. He kind of led them and turned them around very well. Now on the board, I'll see in my talks with a lot of investors, it all comes down to fuel. It seems like in the longer term, you guys are not part of the ARDP, but you have HALEU procured and secured, I guess. How does that look going forward with more procurement of HALEU? Will it be Centrus specifically that you guys need to procure with, or can you go to other HALEU providers or just straight to the DOE? I guess. How does the fuel procurement look going forward?

Jake DeWitte (Co-Founder and CEO)

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, this is one of the things that's interesting and exciting about this space and this opportunity.

I love that we have fuel for our first plant for many, many reasons. One really important one is it helps position us to figure out the best ways to find fuel for the next plants. In a scalable way, it's one of the reasons we've publicly partnered with Centrus. We're very excited that they are producing HALEU as we speak. We're very excited about what their path looks like to increase that and we'll continue to work with them and find the different ways we can help partner and accelerate accordingly on that front. We're very pleased that, you know, obviously, there's been the programs from the U.S. government to help scale up and spin out what's happening on the HALEU side. We see those things as all constructive and moving forward. There is, you know, this kind of multi-step dance that's occurring.

Look, the part of the reason that these kind of Partnership Agreements that we sign are so important is because it helps build the order book and then help build the frameworks accordingly, because everything's adapting and dynamic right now to best accelerate the fuel side jumping forward with the PPA, while, you know, too soon. Then maybe you leave some opportunity on the table about how you could position the growth forward. Because some of these PPAs, even if it's a multi-gigawatt potential upside on the whole project or the whole partnership, you're probably going to most likely have the PPA signed in incremental chunks as the phases go and as they sell the power and their capacity right on the data center side accordingly.

You know, if you want to build the framework for sustained fuel production over 20 years, that's much more valuable to everybody than just sort of like, all right, we have this PPA, we're going to sprint to get built in the next five to eight years, and therefore bring the order accordingly in that sense. Having the refueling kind of cadences go with it, those things pieced together are even more powerful than Standalone. Building that picture out helps the enrichers on capital planning, helps us help build the right frameworks, help build the right kind of contract structures, and even inform the right policy levers is a very important thing to highlight here too. That's, like, significant. First of all, I think sometimes people tend to focus, well, a design does not need HALEU, and that's a big benefit. That's not really that accurate.

The enrichment markets across the Western world are pretty tight, right? We were importing 18% of our enrichment service from Russia, and that's, you know, off the table, more or less, and there's exemptions being made. Of course, I understand that. Even if there's changes in that policy, this is being challenged by, you know, I should say challenged, stretched by increasing demand for new plants, life extensions, restarting plants, even on just the conventional LEU side. Really, the capacity for LEU is basically overbooked, and so is, of course, the capacity for HALEU. Obviously the capacity, the production of LEU is much larger than the production of HALEU today. This is a constraining challenge across the board. What's a feature about that problem, though, is the demand signals are clear across the spectrum.

Obviously the hyperscalers have shown that they're not, you know, they've been partnering, you know, most of these announcements have come working with, like, us and our peers who are doing reactors at Oklo. Clearly there's something, as they dig into it, they feel like these are things that help move that forward because it's a solvable problem. It's important because what all that kind of translates to then is we're stimulating the supply chain for the enrichment industry across the board with these different government programs and these different sort of commercial offtakes, right, that are coming together because the centrifuges that you make on the centrifuge technology base to make HALEU are the same that you're really going to use to make each HALEU.

You're going to typically see an order book that's larger on the side, just given the existing fleet and the size of it. If you spin that into a growth mode, you're going to see significant drop on the economy scales, production of that equipment, and then that's going to propagate across the entire ecosystem from LEU to HALEU. All of this is a silver lining of the tightness today to significant benefits to be seen tomorrow. You know, I do worry about sort of the bridge between now and the early 2030s. We obviously have a little bit of an ace up our sleeve on the recycling side. It's kind of a silly way to say it, but recycling helps diversify our exposure to that massively. That's part of why we're taking this approach.

It also just massively changes the fuel utilization question and economics. It's hard to be dropping your fuel cost, which is a big cost item in our plants, by over 80%. Having that potential is pretty exciting, not to mention all the other benefits you get from recycling. What we see is, you know, like there is significant opportunity and there's appetite, as we see it coming together on the policy landscape, for opening up reserves, extra reserves of fuel that the government has that can be used to bridge us to that point. One of the interesting things about that is that's actually preferentially advantageous on average to actually fast reactors, because you're accommodating the impurities that might exist in some of the government reserves that they can't use for anything else because of impurities that don't matter.

The fast reactors are already using different sources of this material and therefore opening up totally different opportunities to basically bridge us forward. I'll not make this be kind of as a potential sort of coupled kind of finding risk dynamic that does exist today that is going, you know, market forces will force through this and resolve it. We're pretty excited about some of the policy appetite. We've already been a beneficiary of what that looks like. We've shown that that can be a successful pathway to open up government reserves as a bridging mechanism. We're very excited and eager to see that, you know, basically help drive forward, hopefully more of that to come that helps us and others. There's a lot of features that actually by.

By on purpose how we've designed our system, the features that allow us to recycle and be flexible on fuel streams are actually going to help us a lot if those programs get opened up, because a lot we can use pretty much anything that's out there. Not everyone else can do that. That's going to obviously help because the material that maybe others can't use is not going to be as competitive for. It gives us good advantages in that sense. At the end of the day, I feel like, you know, the market's moving in the right ways to address this in a number of fronts. For LEU and HALEU, it's a problem across the board to just catch up on the supply there, but it's happening, which is good.

I'd love to see it happen faster, obviously, but then I think there's also the bridging piece that can really help and help accelerate that happening by the way, that ramp up on the commercial side because then you can go build reactors faster because you're not fuel constrained, which is going to help you then order more fuel to build more reactors faster after that. Virtuous cycle. That's how I kind of look at that.

Max Hopkins (Analyst)

Thank you. Very clear.

Operator (participant)

I will now pass the call back to Sam Doane, Director of Investor Relations, for a couple retail questions.

Sam Doane (Director of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Karen. Jake, Craig, we had a couple retail questions. The first one is, can you give more detail on the Switch deal and confirm is this a firm or conditional, and what does that mean for Oklo?

Jake DeWitte (Co-Founder and CEO)

Yeah, happy to. The Switch deal is a pretty exciting opportunity for us given the size. Right. It's, it's just, it's immense in terms of the magnitude of it at 12 GW. Accordingly it has conditional elements around it for sure. It's not a firm PPA. We didn't want to sign a firm PPA right away around that kind of size. It's, it's too early. It's much better to do what we did here which is say okay, here's how we're going to work together.

You know, Switch went around and kind of built their case and talked to several different companies on companies' technologies and like what we're doing and decided they wanted to work with us and partner with us to power their growth and help power their growth and their ambitions accordingly. You know there's a lot of people doing work in the space, so we have the benefits of being selective too, and we see like they are really well aligned, big vision about what they can do. Incredibly impressive technology for high compute.

I mean, it's just incredibly impressive as a guy, as a technical guy, just from, like, you know, they don't have any tronics and data centers, but they do have thermal hydraulics to thermal fluids, and what they do is awesome and very cool, and getting to see that was pretty neat to see. Accordingly, like their philosophy, their design approach, their attention to detail all kind of resonated really strongly. Not to mention kind of the benefits they have in terms of their plan for scale and growth across a number of different areas.

We were pretty excited to be able to work with them and want to work with them to then frame out this big vision to say hey, here's where we see the roadmap being able to go to, and here's how we're going to start working together as we further refine and define this. This sets the stage because, you know, 12 GW, I mean, it is, it's one of, if not the largest, clean power deal in U.S. history. Like it's, it's great to have the stage set for that, but it takes a lot of time to say, okay, how are we going to execute against this?

Instead of spending a bunch of time to come up with, you know, this grand master plan that at the end of the day is only going to be, you know, 20% accurate because once you start executing against it, things change. Rather, it was like, let's take this incremental piecemeal approach. Let's sign a Master Power Agreement that sets the stage of how we're going to work together on siting and working together in different areas and government affairs, and different aspects around public relations and site relations.

How we do site characterization and studies, how we do design scoping and sizing, how we actually do site design and integration and do the engineering, some of the engineering work and therefore the engineering procurement, construction work accordingly, how we look at how we can overlap those things, tap into what they do really well and find ways to sort of build off of their capabilities so that there's some economic and timing benefits that way and then use those to define how you actually move to the next stages of contract negotiations for firm optic. This is actually really important, and it's the right way to do things.

If you jump straight to this like firm PPA model again, you might miss the target and get into a bunch of retrading and a bunch of renegotiation and that's just not going to be helpful to building out what we're actually trying to do together. Which is much more than just the transactional relationship, right? It's much more about building a very sustainable source of energy to power the future of compute and AI. Like that is pretty potent. That's how we structured that again like just from an engineering kind of like I guess I'd almost call it a philosophical alignment.

Like we, I saw so many parallels to what they do to what we need to do from designing a fixed level asset to then how you route the sort of bring in these prefabricated manufactured componentry and put it together, and route piping and rep plumbing and right about power. Like there's a lot of similarities. It's not again not the same same but there's a lot of interesting similarities. Great example of what that partnership says to stage for and how we expect that to go. It's also worth noting it spans a very long timeline to deploy to that. I mean, it's going to take us a long time to scale into 12 GW.

I mean, I'm excited about the opportunity, but it's not something we can just do overnight, and it's not something we can just do in five years, even, or even 10 years. Right. That's why this spans several decades. Anyway, that's how we frame this and scope this. I think this is kind of the right way to put these things together to help move the ball forward. There's much more to come here, right, as these things progress. It's the right kind of initial steps to move forward.

Craig Bealmear (CFO)

Jake, I always kind of held it internally that, you know, when we were talking to Switch and I think back to the meeting that you and I and other members of our team had with Rob Roy and his team in Las Vegas. It kind of pivoted us towards the Master Partnership Agreement because as we were going deeper in conversations with the Switch team, we realized there was more than one avenue of partnership that we could take with them, which is why we put that overarching frame in place so we could, you know, explore different things at different points in time, you know, and try to find optimized partnership elements between, you know, what Switch is looking for and their priorities as well as Oklo.

Sam Doane (Director of Investor Relations)

Great. Thank you both. Last question for the day. Oklo previously faced regulatory setbacks with the NRC rejecting its application due to information gaps. Given those challenges, what specific changes or advancements have you made that now give you confidence in securing approval for your nuclear projects?

Jake DeWitte (Co-Founder and CEO)

Yeah, I'm not trying to just like, you know, what's the word? Like polish this or put a silver lining on it. The setbacks were also very informative, like learning points to gain a lot of information. I do them some way. Setbacks, but more as learning opportunities afford progress and momentum. Just to recap, like, you know, we submitted our Combined License application the first time around for a 1.5 MW plant out of the Idaho site. This is 2020, right?

Pre this boom in AI data centers, all these customer dynamics and much more focused on kind of a smaller incremental piece of reactor development and deployment. Our long term roadmap was always to work our way up into the sizes we're at now. We just want to start as small as we could to reduce the total amount of capital to get built and still have a viable market, which really works well, that we thought at that time, at that size. The market evolved and moved, which was good. I mean, it's nice because we would, you know, it would have been, wouldn't have been the best thing for us to build a 1.5 MW plant, given where the market is today, had that license progressed.

We took a very forward-leaning licensing approach, and the NRC had worked with us in pre-application for four years leading up to submitting that application, including us piloting an application with them that was very novel in structure in 2018. That was pretty important because we wanted to try to set up a new framework and a new approach on sort of what a license application would look like. I think the tendency, and you know, if we try to license these new reactor types, like large conventional light water reactors, it just does not really make sense. A lot of square peg, round hole. There are a lot of ways you need to do things differently. We leaned into that pretty heavily. The NRC leaned back into that heavily.

After they did rounds of audits on our application, you know, our pilot application in 2018 and 2019, they gave us clear feedback, clear feedback that they could review an application that looked like that. They gave some feedback about how to approach framing and scoping it and also took it that okay, you know, more or less, if you come in or something like that, we could find a path to review that. Just to put some numbers on it, we went in with an application that was very, very forward-leaning, right, very innovative. It was like seven major sections rather than the 19 typical chapters. It was only like less than 600 pages compared to tens of thousands, like 10,000 to 20,000 pages, very different, much more lightweight approach.

In parallel to that, the NRC was doing some new things that was pretty cool. We were pretty excited about what they were doing in terms of piloting a very audit heavy review focus rather than kind of a written question and answer approach. I mean they were going to do both, but do a lot more in the audits, which are much more intensive by the way, but they move faster, much more productive for us and for the regulators additionally. That was all based on in person audits. Right. Additionally, they wanted to move forward this kind of doing some cool, like core team, cross-functional review team that was working together in person, not in the sort of departmental technical silos that they typically would sit in, where an application would come in and get shotgunned out.

Rather they would all be together across different subject matters and working together to kind of develop out their independent safety analysis review and move forward. On top of that, you know, we told them, hey, we're going to come in, you know, very forward leaning. We're going to come in with a, we think is a justifiable and defensible approach, but it's going to inherently be quite different than what you've seen before. A very, you know, I would say optimized safety footprint and how we classified what things were safety related or not. It was, you know, it was very modern, frankly. All that I think was great going in 2019 into early 2020 and unfortunately for much bigger reasons than our application.

Obviously the world changed very substantially in March of 2020, which was when we submitted our application literally on the day the pandemic was declared. That completely shifted the review dynamic so that we were no longer doing these in person things. We were not doing the same approach that we built our application for, you know, as far as we knew. We were told by the NRC at that time we submitted the first application that had ever been submitted online. You know, we never verified and validated that through the whole change, but we think that is pretty true. That was in 2020. Right. It just shows you that we were really doing some new things and they were really responding to it.

Ultimately, I think it was all too much during an era of COVID and that's where we got set back considerably on I think sort of the, okay, we can't review the application as submitted given all these things. They denied it in January 2022 after, you know, a couple months later we're able to engage again in person with them and immediately got back into pre-application. Obviously we updated the design to be bigger because the market had moved on us that way. We had already been talking about that with the NRC and that gave us the platform to do that, move fully into that and then take an approach that allowed us to focus on sort of resolving and answering the open items that the NRC wanted, which mostly turned into, hey, how did you do this? What was your methodology?

Then bridging our approach and how we did it to sort of what they're used to seeing and what they were comfortable with. What we found was a little more time on that got everyone a lot more sort of comfortable with the different approaches being taken and saying, oh, actually you did do these things, it was just done in a way we're different from seeing it.

Now spending time together, we see that it's done in a way that we're kind of used to, maybe some extra approaches on, like if you can help answer questions that we have in these areas that will help us then, you know, progressive review, for example, do you have many, many meetings that then happen from April 22 through now to sort of converge on this, to put draft content of application together, submit different technical reports and have meetings and have reviews on this, or white papers, I should say, and then also have the topical reports coming out. Also, moving into readiness assessment gives us the chance to then move forward on all these things.

Time since when we first submitted through now in time, looking at these things as well as how we're using them and implementing them, has actually grown a lot more convergence on the doability of some of the things we were intending to do. Obviously, there's some updates and some modernization, but the lessons learned have been massive because we spent time to actually now go through those things and try to do things. A key thing that was different for us compared to other companies is we leaned into that opportunity back at the very beginning of our engagement with the NRC to try to do things in as efficient as a way as we could see possible. We got some bumps and bruises and scratches and all of that and black eyes accordingly. Guess what? Look at how things have progressed accordingly.

A lot of that stuff mimics, not mimics, but builds off of some of the things we put forward. Like some stuff we tried and put forward maybe a bit too different or too much. It is kind of changed. A lot of things are finding a lot of footing in the different things the energy has done in the last, frankly, right, almost nine years since we started working with them. Not because it is like, oh, we did all these things, look how great it is. It is more, hey, we are trying to do something differently. Then others start echoing that with some time in it. We were obviously ahead of the pack.

As others start kind of digging in and developing their own plans in the space, and then the energy is looking at it, it kind of all comes together in a constructive way to say, okay, yeah, we could do something in this way that's more efficient and right sized. You couple that with the current environment that's gone from several administrations successively of trying to drive forward more modernized regulatory framework and approach to reflect these kind of capabilities and exchanges, you know, it's pretty exciting, honestly. At the end of the day, like, you know, we've applied a lot of lessons learned, we've done a lot, obviously, we've grown this team. We've hired a lot of good folks to come in and help us do this.

A lot of the things that we put forward are also finding kind of footing with some updates and tweaks with iterations on them that have, you know, come together over the last couple years. These things do not move super quickly, but we have invested the longest amount of time of anybody to get to this state. We are in a really good position to go forward into submitting an application and the next steps thereafter. You know, obviously there is a lot more work to do, but, you know, we have been very excited about how the NRC has done things, how we have been doing things. The feedback we have gotten has been helpful and constructive here. You know, there are some things we have kind of evolved our course on.

are things that I think the energy has as well, but at the end of the day, it is coming together to set the stage for review. Look, they have licensed and issued things for other advanced reactor types which are pretty important, granted construction permits or design certifications, and those are not the same as a COLA. All that builds on itself so that when we go in with the COLA application, there is a lot that we get to stand on and they get to stand on from a success perspective. That is my really long answer. It has been a journey and one that will continue to.

Operator (participant)

I will now hand the call back to Jake DeWitte for closing remarks.

Jake DeWitte (Co-Founder and CEO)

Great. Thank you all so much for the time. I just want to talk about the different updates and things we have going on. 2024 was a very exciting year for us for a lot of reasons, but also just a preview of what we are all really excited to go do. Something I tend to talk about internally is the broad potential that this technology has, and truly unlocking the energy of the actinides that we are fortunately blessed with to have this incredible energy resource that fast reactors and recycling are pretty uniquely positioned to fully tap into. Thank you for the time, and looking forward to the next one.

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining and you may now disconnect.