Shares of advanced nuclear developer Oklo Inc. dropped for a third consecutive day Sept. 26 after analysts at Goldman Sachs questioned the firm's riskier financial strategy and lack of signed contracts.
The company's stock price has skyrocketed in 2025, closing out 2024 at $21.23 and settling at $142.65 on Sept. 23, thanks to federal policy and data center-driven electricity demand tailwinds.
On Sept. 24, however, Goldman analysts initiated coverage of Oklo in a report asserting that "the stock appears to have priced in a lot of the nuclear resurgence so far, in our opinion."
Oklo units have dipped nearly 24% since then, including a drop of about 7% on Sept. 26, to $110.62.
While the company's potential customer pipeline totals more than 14 GW, Goldman analysts wrote, Oklo's plans to own and operate its advanced fission power plants are a "heavy capital burden" presenting "meaningful risk to Oklo's success."
Furthermore, Oklo has not yet secured firm power purchase agreements after inking preliminary customer deals with data center operators including Equinix Inc., Switch Inc. and Prometheus Hyperscale, the analysts added.
Asked when the firm would sign a power purchase agreement, CFO Craig Bealmear said during the company's second-quarter earnings call Aug. 11 that "because we're trying to do things beyond just optimizing on a [power purchase agreement] price, I think it will take us a little bit longer to get things in place, but for all the right reasons."
BofA analysts, on the other hand, were less concerned about finalized contracts in an Aug. 26 note initiating Oklo coverage.
"While these agreements are not yet binding, we see a credible path to conversion given the acute scarcity of firm power and surging load growth from hyperscalers, creating an 'if you build it, they will come' backdrop that plays directly to Oklo's vertically integrated build-own-operate model," they wrote.
Oklo held a groundbreaking ceremony Sept. 22 for non-reactor buildings to be used for its planned Aurora reactor, which is being developed with capacity designs of 15 MW and 75 MW, at the US Energy Department's Idaho National Laboratory.
The company was also selected by the DOE as part of a fast-track program for non-commercial reactors outside national laboratories. The program will rely on DOE authorization rather than US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licensing.
President Donald Trump's recent executive orders include a goal of quadrupling US nuclear capacity by 2050, to 400 GW, along with directives to facilitate construction, develop technologies, cut restrictive regulations and overhaul the NRC to produce a "nuclear energy renaissance."
Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), however, is seeking answers from the White House about Trump administration actions regarding Oklo, where Energy Secretary Chris Wright was a board member until February.
"I am concerned that your administration is moving forward with plans to transfer plutonium to Oklo and allow it to build a reprocessing plant not because these proposals make sense for the United States, but because Oklo stands to benefit financially and Secretary Wright is acting in his former company's interest," Markey said in the Sept. 23 letter.
Markey, in his letter to Trump, noted that Oklo increased its lobbying expenditures in the first quarter of 2025 by 500% compared with the first quarter of 2024. Also, Wright and his wife donated nearly $800,000 in 2024 to Trump's presidential campaign and the Republican National Committee, Markey said, adding, "[g]iven Secretary Wright's close ties to the company, Oklo's nuclear projects present an appearance of impropriety."
