“When I got the first call saying: ‘Would you like to be CFO of Oklo [OKLO]?’, I didn’t know what the company was,” Craig Bealmear confesses on the latest OPTO Sessions.
That was 2023, but today Bealmear understands Oklo and the nuclear sector inside-out.
“The company got its start by looking at the fact there are numerous customers out there that need the clean, affordable, reliable energy that nuclear power can provide. But the industry itself had a lot of complexity,” he explains.
Oklo’s mission remains to simplify it. Founded in 2013 by CEO Jacob DeWitte and COO Caroline Cochran, both MIT graduates, it specializes in advanced fission, building small modular reactors (SMRs) — easier to deploy, scale up and keep safe than traditional nuclear plants.
Its philosophy caught the eye of its star investor OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who has served as chairman since 2015.
Oklo listed in 2024, going public through a de-SPAC and attracting a significant amount of investor attention amid a share-price spike in February 2025.
Bealmear plays a pivotal role driving Oklo’s financial and growth strategy.
An experienced leader in the energy sector, Bealmear spent 28 years at BP [BP] as CFO for its North America downstream division, leading financial reporting, control and compliance for refineries, midstream operations and 7,500 retail sites. With particular expertise in joint ventures, he most recently served on Renewable Energy Group’s senior leadership team, driving a $550m green bond offering and the company’s 2022 sale to Chevron [CVX] for $3.15bn.
A Three-Part Power Model
Oklo’s strategy has three key elements, says Bealmear. First is a streamlined business model.
“Traditional nuclear companies design a powerhouse, then sell that design to somebody else, who will build it then sell it to somebody else, who will operate. We stood back and figured out what our customers really want is just the power.”
Consequently, Oklo designs, builds, owns and operates reactors, or “powerhouses”, themselves, selling electricity directly to companies through a power purchase agreement that can last 20–30 years.
The second is size.
“When people think nuclear, they think very large assets.” To put it in perspective, a typical nuclear power plant has a capacity of 1GW. Oklo’s powerhouses come in three sizes: 15, 50 and 75MW.
“What that size means is we can put one of our powerhouses on premises behind the meter. It becomes a direct source of clean, affordable, reliable power for our customers.”
The third factor is technology.
Oklo’s SMR design is based on the Experimental Breeder Reactor II, or EBR-II, that operated for 30 years in Idaho. Instead of using water as the coolant, Oklo’s SMRs employ liquid metal sodium. “It allows us to operate at very high temperatures, creating a high-quality steam, but we can operate at atmospheric pressure. So we don’t need a lot of specialized pressure vessels, which lowers complexity, which lowers cost.”
Growing Demand
Oklo’s outlook is partly driven by the current spike in electricity usage, as well as increased demand for low-carbon options.
“What we’re seeing in the US is that suddenly there’s a huge uptake in demand for power,” says Bealmear. Under a road map introduced by former President Joe Biden, US capacity for nuclear power generation could triple by 2050.
Since Bealmear started in August 2023, Oklo’s order book has grown from 700MW to 14GW. Customers range from the industrial sector to the US military. Unsurprisingly, the greatest demand is in the data center space as power requirements for artificial intelligence (AI) continue to grow.
Bealmear reels off several customers, including data-center operator Equinix [EQIX] and AI infrastructure experts Prometheus Hyperscale. “Most recently, we signed a 12GW master partnership agreement with a very large data center provider called Switch.”
Other customers include the US Air Force at Alaska’s Eielson Air Force Base, oil and gas company Diamondback Energy [FANG] and the Piketon-based industrial park known as the Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative.
Oklo’s attraction for customers is not just low prices, underlines Bealmear, though theirs remain competitive. “It’s more how quickly we can bring [energy] to them.”
They can also increase power capacity in stages, installing SMRs as companies grow. In simple terms: “We can match supply of power with demand.”
The Future: Fuel Recycling and Beyond
Clearly, big plans are on the horizon, though at present Oklo is “pre-revenue”. Its first reactors will be at Idaho National Labs, near where EBR II operated. “The Department of Energy gave us land and fuel for that first powerhouse,” says Bealmear.
Oklo’s fuel source is HALEU, or High Assay Low Enriched Uranium, which is recycled from the EBR II. He adds: “Our design allows us to run on fresh HALEU or recycled fuel.”
Beyond generating power, recycling fuel is Oklo’s other key pipeline revenue stream. “We’re working with the Department of Energy on fuel recycling capability, because there is enough nuclear fuel in storage to power the United States for a hundred years.” One possible future customer is Bill Gates’ nuclear firm TerraPower in Wyoming.
A lucrative byproduct of the recycling process is radioisotopes, adds Bealmear, which have their own market value. “There’s a lot of emerging uses in pharmaceutical and aerospace. There’s probably a $50bn market emerging.” On March 5, Oklo bought Atomic Alchemy, which aims to produce radioisotopes on a standalone basis. Bealmear believes “they could be producing and selling isotopes as early as this time next year.”
Nuclear Future
The opportunities ahead for nuclear look huge, says Bealmear. “Our 14GW order book translates into 1% of US power usage today. That demonstrates the size of our demand opportunity.” Near-term, they aim to have the Idaho plant online by 2027 or early 2028.
“The other thing we’re building out is our overall fuel and non-fuel supply chain. We have a partnership with Centrus [LEU], a fuel supplier, but we’re doing other things to build out fuel supply for our business until recycling comes online.”
Oklo might be more than a decade old, but, says Bealmear, it retains that start-up energy. “The excitement and momentum are infectious … My kids are in their 20s and they definitely think it’s pretty cool that I’m working for a company like Oklo.”
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