Oklo (NYSE: OKLO) is only a year removed from its SPAC‑enabled debut, but its share price has already catapulted more than 193 % year to date and a staggering 615 % over the past twelve months, giving the advanced‑nuclear up‑start an $8.2 billion market valuation.
The run‑up naturally raises the question of whether the stock can realistically double from here? To answer it, we drill beneath the headline rallies and into a set of facts that even many seasoned energy investors have not yet pieced together.
Very Different Utilities Story
At first blush Oklo looks anomalous inside the stodgy “regulated electric utilities” peer group listed on most screeners. The company is pre‑revenue, logged a $59 million net loss over the last twelve months, and holds $201 million of cash against negligible debt.
Yet the market is valuing Oklo at roughly 31x book value because it is pursuing a technology platform, not a rate‑based franchise.
Its Aurora “powerhouse” is a 15‑ to 50‑megawatt liquid‑metal fast reactor designed to be manufactured almost like data‑center hardware and then sold not as a reactor, but as a long‑term electricity service under power‑purchase agreements. That business model, selling electrons rather than equipment, is where the optionality hides.
Demand Spike Few Have Modeled
The bullish backdrop starts with the energy math of artificial‑intelligence computing. U.S. data‑center electricity demand is projected to double in just five years, soaring from 176 TWh in 2023 to as much as 580 TWh in 2028.
Conventional grids cannot add that much carbon‑free baseload power quickly; wind and solar are constrained by geography and intermittency, while new gas plants are bumping into policy headwinds.
Small, factory‑built reactors that can be dropped in 50‑MW blocks next to a server farm are suddenly a hard requirement. That steep, time‑compressed load curve is the single biggest variable most discounted‑cash‑flow models still underestimate.
Order Book Hiding in Plain Sight
Oklo has quietly compiled a customer pipeline that looks nothing like an early‑stage start‑up. Last November it disclosed letters of intent with two major data‑center operators totaling 750 megawatts, the equivalent of fifty 15‑MW Aurora unit, taking its identified sales funnel to about 2.1 gigawatts.
Six weeks later the company signed what may be the largest corporate clean‑power agreement ever recorded, a non‑binding master agreement with Switch to deploy up to 12 gigawatts of Aurora capacity through 2044.
And in June 2025 the U.S. Air Force tapped Oklo to power Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska, a “mission‑critical” contract that sent the shares to an intra‑day record.
Add those pieces up and Oklo’s prospective backlog dwarfs its current market cap, yet the scale is still poorly reflected in sell‑side coverage.
Economics the Street Hasn’t Run
Oklo’s early filings reveal that an Aurora rated at 15 MWe is expected to cost roughly $70 million to build and generate electricity at a levelized cost of $80‑$130 per MWh depending on site specifics.
That price is already competitive with peaker‑plant natural gas in many regions and should decline as Oklo moves down its manufacturing learning curve.
Just as important, management is pursuing closed‑fuel‑cycle technology that can recycle spent nuclear fuel and cut fuel costs by up to 80 %—a margin lever most investors ignore because it sits outside traditional utility modeling.
Run a back‑of‑the‑envelope case: at $90 per MWh and a 90 % capacity factor, a single 15‑MW reactor could pull in about $10 million of annual revenue, enough to pay back capex in roughly eight years even before any operating‑expense improvements from recycled fuel.
A fleet of 1 GW, less than half the Switch framework, would throw off potentially 9-figures in yearly sales, covering today’s enterprise value with just one large customer largely de‑risked.
Regulatory and Fuel‑Supply Headwinds Are Easing
Critics point to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s 2022 rejection of Oklo’s first combined‑license application.
What is less appreciated is how quickly the landscape has shifted. Congress passed the ADVANCE Act, which forces the NRC to streamline licensing for advanced reactors, and the agency is now in pre‑application talks with Oklo on a revised submission.
On the fuel side, Oklo already holds a DOE award for 5 metric tons of HALEU and completed the first end‑to‑end demonstration of electro‑refining fuel recycling last year, a project funded under ARPA‑E’s ONWARDS program.
Those milestones materially reduce two of the most cited existential risks: licensing paralysis and fuel scarcity.
Balance‑Sheet Runway Looks Adequate
Oklo ended the most recent quarter with $201 million in cash and expects 2025 cash usage between $65 million and $80 million, implying at least two full years of funding even without additional capital raises.
Management has also demonstrated an ability to tap low‑cost equity, its May 2024 SPAC merger delivered $306 million of gross proceeds at a fraction of today’s valuation.
As long as the company hits de‑risking milestones, including site permits, long‑lead equipment orders, and the expected NRC application this winter, fresh capital should remain available on reasonable terms.
Will Oklo Stock Double?
For Oklo stock to double it needs to convert LOIs to binding PPAs, secure a partial construction license, and demonstrate cost discipline on its first Aurora.
Even a 200‑MW tranche with Switch or a second data‑center customer would begin to assign discounted future revenue to the share price.
Add to that a successful acceptance review at the NRC would slash perceived regulatory risk and open the door to DOE loan‑guarantee financing that rivals TerraPower and NuScale have already tapped.
If the Idaho prototype comes in near that $70 million estimate, financial models that currently assume $100‑$120 million per unit will be rewritten overnight.
Because the market prices growth stocks on future optionality, proof points in any one of those buckets could expand Oklo’s enterprise value enough to justify a mid‑teens multiple of prospective sales, even before the first kilowatt is generated.
The Counter‑Arguments Deserve Respect
None of this is pre‑ordained. Fast reactors remain untested in commercial service and senators have already questioned the proliferation risks of fuel recycling as well as small‑modular‑reactor peers such as NuScale have battled painful cost overruns.
Moreover, the Switch agreement is non‑binding, and the Air Force contract hinges on regulatory approvals that have historically moved at a glacial pace.
Investors should also remember that Oklo’s valuation rests on discounted cash flows many years out, making the stock hypersensitive to Treasury‑rate shocks or any policy reversal on nuclear incentives.
Bottom Line
Count the pieces together and the path for Oklo to double is visible, though not without execution risk. The company sits at the nexus of a once‑in‑a‑generation power‑demand spike, has assembled a multi‑gigawatt sales funnel few have priced in, and is tackling cost and fuel hurdles with technology that most investors still lump under “science experiment.”
If Oklo nails a binding PPA, clears the first NRC gate, or proves its $70 million cost target in Idaho, Wall Street models could expand quickly enough to justify a $16 billion market cap, effectively a double from today’s share price.
For now the stock remains a high‑volatility bet, but in a market desperate for scalable zero‑carbon power, Oklo’s optionality is hard to replicate.
Traders willing to stomach the regulatory twists may find that the next big move comes not from headlines, but from the quiet milestones hidden in the footnotes.
The author has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Financhill has a disclosure policy. This post may contain affiliate links or links from our sponsors.