← The Rundown
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome back to the Rundown, one of the top business podcasts in the world. Today we are talking to the CFO of oklo, Craig Bellmer. OKLO is an up and coming nuclear company with incredible technology and they've captured the attention of Wall street and retail investors. So in today's discussion, I asked Craig about the comeback of nuclear energy in the US how the regulatory picture is changing, the role that AI is playing in the comeback and, and the challenges of managing investors expectations as a pre revenue company. It was a very interesting conversation. I really enjoyed. I think you guys will like it as well. All right, let's get into it.
- [00:45]
All right guys. Today we are talking to Craig Bellmer, the CFO of Oklahoma, one of the hottest nuclear companies in the world. Craig, thanks so much for hopping on today.
- [00:55]
B
It's a pleasure to be here and thanks for creating time for, for OKLO to be on your show.
- [00:59]
A
Absolutely, absolutely. You know, I gotta say 2025, big year for Oklo, big year for nuclear in general. I feel that there's a renewed interest when it comes to nuclear energy in the United States. Before we really dive into the rest of the interview, what would you say, how would you say that OKLO is uniquely positioned to take advantage of this renewed interest in nuclear energy?
- [01:20]
B
Well, first of all, I agree with you. I've been with OKLO for a little over two years and I tell people that when I joined oklo, I thought the world was in the land of why nuclear? I think we then transitioned to why not nuclear? And it feels like we're now in the land of nuclear. Now, please. With some exclamation points over it. But I think oklo, I think we're uniquely positioned and we talk about there being three factors of our business model, our size and our technology. From a business model, we're intending to build, own and operate powerhouses and then sell power directly to customers through 20 year power purchase agreements. And that really is giving the customers what they want, which is the clean, affordable, reliable, baseload power, but not necessarily needing to operate an asset. We have a multitude of size offerings. I think even the fact that I talk about us having a power offering really demonstrates that we've kind of done a customer back way of looking at our business. And we've grown that size offering from 15 megawatts when I started to 75 megawatts, which we think is ideally suited for the industrial, the oil and gas, the military, and last but definitely not least, the data center and hyperscaler customers that we have and they like that size footprint. And then technology wise, we're not trying to deploy a new technology. We base our technology on an asset called the experimental breeder reactor 2, which operated for 30 years at the Idaho National Labs using liquid metal sodium as opposed to water as the coolant or the heat transfer agent. And what's important about that technology choice is we think a 75 megawatt powerhouse will need three to four acres, and that's inclusive of kind of safety, perimeter, parking lots, etc. But also means that we can, because we, we will need water to boil to make steam to turn a steam turbine generator into power. But we don't have to worry about water from the point of view of cooling. And it means that we can site a powerhouse just about anywhere. And the fact that we've announced projects in Idaho, Alaska, Texas, Ohio and there's many other states kind of in solution, it just demonstrates that we can, you know, allow our customers to have a. Bring their power with them 24.7Reliable power solution, which I think has got a lot. Why there's so much interest in the company.
- [03:47]
A
Yeah, I think when a lot of people think of nuclear power, it's like the, the picture of the Sims or these massive power plants, these, these, these reactors. People think of like disasters in the past as well. But you guys are working on a different setup. It's smaller reactors, it's more flexible. It's not necessarily just these massive.
- [04:05]
B
And the reactor core is actually buried in the ground. It's got passive safety characteristics, meaning. And we can operate at atmospheric pressure. So we've done a lot of things to simplify our approach, build in inherent safety characteristics, which is a plus. And you know, I sometimes do like to bring up on my phone a picture of an Aurora powerhouse and ask friends or families, you know, what does this look like? And you know, to. Typically you get ski chalet. I've even gotten church. You know, that looks like an interesting hotel concept. You know, it, but it, but you know, and I think that's intentional that we want there to be an aesthetic that matches, you know, the reliable power that we plan on bringing to the marketplace.
- [04:48]
A
Yeah, it's kind of like. It's like a barn, essentially. It's like, it's like a barn, like a, a frame barn that I think. Yeah, yeah. So it is, it is a very different design than what everyone else kind of thinks that when it comes to nuclear. But sticking with like the overall topic of like the revival of nuclear energy, I think the admitt administration has been a Big, big driver of that. Right. The Trump administration signed a few executive orders back in, in May. From your perspective, what is, what has that resulted in when it comes to like actual impact on, on OKLO and the nuclear, in the nuclear industry, Is it like faster permitting times? Is it more investments from the, from the government? Like, what does that look like for you guys?
- [05:28]
B
Yeah, so I tend to think about our business having, you know, what almost feels like unconstrained demand. So how do we have the supply to meet that demand? And I think the, you know, I think there's kind of five things that oklo's progressing. I think one is, you know, regulatory pathway. The second one is fuel. Third one is a supply chain outside of fuel. The fourth is asset deployment, construction capability. And we are a capital intensive business, so making sure that we've got cash on the balance sheet and, and other financing plans to enable that. And I think the executive orders really did help the first two of those factors, that is providing improvements in the turnaround time on getting a permit approved. That's without compromising safety because safety has always got to be first and foremost in our mind. The fact that the Department of Energy has launched 11 reactor pilot programs which are really aimed at getting assets built and deployed and on the ground, you know, in a shorter time frame. You know, and there's certain things that are going on around potentially making fuel available. Our first, I would even point to the fact that our first powerhouse, the Department of Energy, awarded us land and fuel for that powerhouse. And that was before I even started with the company. So prior to the executive orders. But it does feel like those executive orders are really helping the adoption of nuclear power by helping especially on the permitting timeline and the fuel timeline. I might also point out though, that even prior to this administration a year ago, the advance act was also signed into law by the prior administration. And it was really an act focused at reducing the timelines for SMRs to be permitted, reducing NRC fees. And that act passed the Senate 88 to 2. It passed the House 393 to 13. And I'll only throw those numbers out there because I think it just demonstrates that there's a significant, significant amount of bipartisan support for nuclear as well.
- [07:38]
A
Yeah, that's the exciting part, is that it's not just one party or the other. Everyone wants nuclear to happen now. It's just been fully embraced by all sides, which, which is great to see. A couple other things when it comes to, comes to the government, I think Akla was selected for Three projects under the Department of Energy's new reactor pilot program as well. So you guys are doing projects for the government right now?
- [07:57]
B
Yeah. So there was 11 projects awarded overall and there is a goal by the administration to have three of those projects live or critical by July 4th of 2026. So our nation's 250th birthday and then Oklahoma was awarded three of those 11 projects. We don't think all three of our projects could hit that timeline. But we're doing everything we can do to move at pace. One of those was focused for our INL project. There was a second project called Project Pluto, which I can't go into any much more details around that, but I will note that we're working things in the fuel space. And then the third was focused on our atomic alchemy business for a project based in Texas. And we're really excited about the momentum that those three reactor pilot programs are bringing to our business.
- [08:48]
A
Yeah, so that's, that's exciting stuff. So the government, the government's push for nuclear energy is awesome. The other big push, the other catalyst for nuclear is the AI stuff. Right. We're approaching, I think we just crossed the three year anniversary of Chat GPT. Sam Altman was a former chairman of oklo. What, where do you think, what do you, what do you think OKLO would be today if not for the AI boom? Like how big of a deal is this AI boom? Because big tech companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars building these power hungry data centers. And every, everyone talks about how there's going to be a lack of power to power these things. Nuclear seems to be the solution to that. How big of a deal is this to OKLO and the nuclear space in general?
- [09:34]
B
Well, I think it's great to have a growing order book which we have, and it's great to have a large amount of customer demand. And clearly.
- [09:43]
It doesn't matter what third party study you look at. It's clear that there's rising demand for power in the United States and that everyone likes the role that nuclear can play on being that reliable baseload power provider. I would say that, you know, clearly the growth in data center demand has been an important catalyst to our business. But equally, I would point out that our order book is not made up just of data center or hyperscaler customers. There's industrial customers, there's oil and gas, there's the US military. And when you look at any of these demand growth curves, if it's looking at a 2 to 4% compound annual growth rate. It always feels like the data center is playing a component of that, but it's not, it's not the only factor driving that growth.
- [10:33]
A
I think that's a key point there because I think a concern that a lot of investors have is if there is a slowdown in capex by these big tech players when it comes to building out their data centers, what are like the ripple effects of that? Could nuclear, could nuclear companies like OKLO be impacted if there's less investments? What you're trying to say is that data centers are just one part of the overall business. You have governments, you have industrials, you have others.
- [10:57]
B
We believe in the value of a diversified order book across customers, across market sectors for certain. I would also point out that, you know, like if we have a customer who right now says they want 750 megawatts of power deployed with a 75 megawatt power, that would mean we would need 10 powerhouses deployed on their campus. If they suddenly determined that they needed a little less power, you know, that might reduce the number of powerhouses we're looking to deploy from 10 to 8. It doesn't mean that it all goes away. And so we actually think that that size point also gives us some flexibility as well. If our customer demand or our needs shift over time, are you able to.
- [11:44]
A
Share some insight on what you project forward or just generally when it comes to the breakup of whether it's going to be what percent is going to come from data centers versus versus governments versus industrials?
- [11:57]
B
If you look at our, you know, we've talked about having an order book that's sitting at 14 gigawatts and we've not, you know, broken out a pie chart of here's all the market sectors. But if we were to do something like that, the law, the largest slice in that pie chart would be, would be data center oriented customers.
- [12:16]
A
Okay, that's good to know. That's good to know. That kind of brings me to like the spotlight that OKLO has kind of come under from the retail investor audience. That's a big part of our audience here. It's the stock has become like embraced by retail investors and we've seen some companies like Palantir embrace that. Tesla is kind of like the OG when it comes to embracing that. How do you feel as a CFO of a company that's kind of been embraced by the retail audience? Do you, do you, do you kind of lean into that like the palantirs of the world or do you just kind of tune out the noise.
- [12:49]
B
No, I think we think that it's really important to have a diversified investor base and we think it's great that we've got a strong retail following in our stock. I will say there was probably a lesson learned for me that you know, when the. Because most of my time in BP and Renewable Energy Group, which were the other two public companies I worked for, did not have the size of retail investors that OKLO does have. So I think I've learned some things in the first year and a half that we've been a public company around doing events like your podcast, making sure that we've got a portion of our company update that we do every quarter. Making sure that we've got not only the ability to intake the Citibank analyst questions which are important, or B of A or JP Morgan, whoever that analyst happens to be, but equally we want to make sure that we've got an avenue to take on board retail oriented questions as well. We've done some things in the past like ask me anything events focus at the retail investor. So we definitely think it's great to have a retail investor base but then make sure that you're doing things tailored to meet the needs of that investor base as well.
- [14:01]
A
Yeah, I mean like I said from where I'm sitting here, I get asked about, you know, Oklahoma is one of the most asked about stocks that I hear about, which I, I imagine a big chunk of your job, probably the hardest part of your job is like managing investor expectations. Whether it's like the, the, you know, the JP Morgan's of the world or like the retail investors and balancing that with like, you guys are still pre revenue, right?
- [14:26]
B
So, so revenue, Right.
- [14:28]
A
Pre revenue. So how do you balance all the, the expectations that, that investors have with all the, the exciting projects that you guys are working on. The Aurora powerhouse is one of the ones that you mentioned. Those are not expected to be complete for another couple of years. How do you kind of balance all of that? Because there's a, there's a lot of pressure for you guys to deliver on those timelines and if those timelines get moved around, that's, they could cause some anxiety amongst the investor base.
- [14:55]
B
Well, I think, you know, we have a milestone oriented approach to our quarterly investor update process, you know, and it's clearly not earnings focused, it is more milestone focused. I think one of the things that investors have liked, we've got a six box milestone framework that talks about things we're doing on the regulatory front, the fuel front, the customer front. The supply chain front, other commercial business development and what our finances look like. And I think the fact that we keep coming back to that frame and linking things to that frame and talking about what you can expect next relative to milestones in each of those six quadrants, I think the investors appreciate that.
- [15:40]
But also I think we've learned some things. A good example of this is as the business has grown, and I'd say it's grown now that there's activities not just going on for Powerhouse, but for fuel fabrication and for recycling and for our radioisotope business. It was becoming clear internally that we've got a lot of things going on the regulatory front. And it's a lot to keep track of internally. It's one of the reasons why there's now a regulatory dashboard on our website so that we can show different regulatory progress against different bits of our business. And so I think, you know, the more. And I think we definitely work very hard, and I do try to carve out a significant amount of time, as does Jake DeWitt and Carolyn Cochran, our two co founders, around making sure that we're creating time for a lot of investor interaction. Maybe the one thing that has been hard is the number of, say, analyst events that we were invited to two years ago. We're invited to more now. So there is a little bit of trying to be mindful of, you know, where and how we split our time. And also part of this is, you know, we're. We've. We're looking to, like, expand our investor relations team from a team of one to a team of two. You know, and some of that is clearly a function of, you know, we've got a growing investor base, we've got growing investor interest, and we need to grow the size of the team to help manage that.
- [17:12]
A
Yeah, I feel that's still going to be one of the most challenging aspects of your role moving forward, which just kind of we'll wrap up with this. You know, like I said, 2025, big year for nuclear. Big year for Oklo. What would you say is the most defining moment of 2025 for Oklo?
- [17:28]
B
Man?
- [17:30]
Maybe I'll try to have two, I think, externally, you know, the executive orders, senior CEO in the Oval Office, when those were being announced. And that's not just a catalyst for oklo. I think that's a catalyst for the sector, but I think that was clearly a defining moment. And then I think, you know, internally, I mean, the groundbreaking ceremony on September 22, and the fact that the moment we put the Fancy shovels away. The heavy equipment came on board and we're really working at pace right now to do as much ground prep work as we can at the Idaho site prior to winter setting in. And I think, you know, that was another, you know, very, you know, important milestone for the company this year. Yeah.
- [18:21]
A
For the listeners. You guys broke ground on actually physically building the Aurora and we are now moving earth.
- [18:27]
B
And, you know, we know where the powerhouse and the supporting structures are going to go. We know it's not the right time of the year to be doing, you know, pouring cement and doing the foundation work, but we're doing as much prep for that now as we can so that when the spring comes, you know, you will start to see things being built up.
- [18:49]
A
Yeah, yeah. Honestly, those are the two ones that popped in my mind as well. Was the. Was the CEO.
- [18:54]
B
But it's a hard question to answer because, you know, there was the Atomic Alchemy acquisition, you know, there's the things we've been doing around fuel the announcement in Tennessee.
- [19:07]
My finance team is probably kicking me right now because we also did some capital raise this year. But definitely, I think the executive orders and the INL groundbreaking is still how I would because you only gave me one and I took an extra one.
- [19:20]
A
I think those are valid then. Looking forward to 2026. We're about to wrap up 2025. What would you say? What do you expect to be the most defining moment for the company in 2026?
- [19:35]
B
I think we're going to have across the piece some progress on the asset deployment side, which I think will be important. We're hopeful that at least one of those reactor pilots will go critical in 2026. I think that's going to be a pretty important moment for the company We've talked about. Our Atomic Alchemy business does have the potential to be generating small amounts of revenue in the first half of 2026. So I think that could be another defining moment. And we are doing a lot of things on the customer front to take the mous and the letters of intent into something.
- [20:15]
More structured and more permanent. So having a power purchase agreement in place. And I think those are some of the big milestones that we are working on as we speak.
- [20:25]
A
That's exciting stuff. Craig, I appreciate you hopping on the show. I know a lot of our listeners are interested and learning more about the company. Is there anywhere that they can visit? You mentioned the OKLO website to learn more about.
- [20:36]
B
Look at the OKLO website. And you know, I think Bonita and The team who Benita leads our media and comms effort. You know, I think there's a wealth of information in there and we're always looking for ways to add more. Like there's a great little 2 1/2 minute video on how fuel recycling works and we kind of found, hey, that, that's a better way in two and a half minutes to describe what it is than maybe what a CFO could do in two and a half hours. So I think that's a great place to go for more information on the company.
- [21:05]
A
Yeah, educational videos about how like the, like the science works is always interesting especially for someone like me who has a, has a bit of an energy background. So keep it up. You guys are, you guys are making some moves and I appreciate you hopping on the show.
- [21:18]
B
Appreciate the time. Thanks and have a great rest of your day.
- [21:20]
A
You too. Well, all right guys, hope you enjoyed that great conversation with Craig Bellmer. The nuclear space is just really interesting to overall, I'm just happy to see a revival for nuclear energy here in the US So it's great to hear from Craig on how OKLO is approaching it. Obviously the energy demand from all these AI data centers is playing a role, but even if the AI bubble pops, we can always use the energy infrastructure like nuclear power to power homes. Let me know in the comments on Spotify and YouTube on what you guys thought about the interview, especially if you're an OKLO investor or you're planning to invest in oklo. You know, personally I'm not sure if I'm ready to invest in a pre revenue company but if they can deliver on their promises, I the upside is definitely there. So sound off in the comments and let me know what you guys think. Thank you guys again for listening, watching and commenting. Shout out to Mike and Connor for all the work behind the scenes and we'll see you guys back here tomorrow.
- [22:25]
B
And Doug, here we have the Limu.
- [22:27]
A
Emu in its natural habitat helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug. Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.
- [22:43]
B
Cut the camera.
- [22:44]
A
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