Thiel’s stake lock in Ultraman-backed nuclear company set to end

(Bloomberg) — Oklo Inc., a developer of advanced nuclear systems backed by Sam Altman, has seen a wild rally since going public earlier this year, giving its founders and early investors a huge paper windfall. . Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm is one of the companies that could soon start turning a profit.

Major venture capital investors who previously served on the company’s board can begin divesting about 13.5 million shares as early as Tuesday, when restrictions preventing early backers from selling stock will be lifted, six months after Oklo’s blank-check deal closed.

Potential sellers include Mithril Capital Management LLC, co-founded by Thiel and Ajay Royan, and DCVC. Regulatory filings show each holds more than 6.5 million shares.

Oklo’s stock price has been volatile since its listing, falling to $5.35 on September 9 and then soaring more than 425% in the next two months. The stock hit a high of $28.12 on Wednesday before losing 17% of its value over the next four days as investors flocked to companies tied to the nuclear power industry. As of 11:55 a.m. in New York, the company had a market value of about $2.5 billion.

The stock’s wild rise means the early investors’ stakes are each worth more than $130 million, double the value of the combined special purpose acquisition companies in May. It also resulted in paper windfalls for OpenAI CEO Altman and serial dealmaker Michael Klein, as well as executives Jacob DeWitte and Caroline Cochran. Michael Klein is a co-sponsor of the SPAC that took Oklo public. The latter is currently unable to sell shares until May, but there is some caveat that if the stock continues to perform well, millions of shares could be open for sale as soon as next week.

Representatives for Mithril did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Representatives for Oklo and DCVC declined to comment.

The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission voted 2-1 late Friday night to reject a proposal to increase the power supplied to Amazon’s data facilities, putting the company’s stock price and other U.S. power stocks under pressure on Monday. Adjacent to Talen Energy’s Susquehanna Nuclear Generating Station in Pennsylvania.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Oklo is still years away from having a functioning reactor, which it has said could come online by the end of the decade. Still, its shares have benefited from the adoption of artificial intelligence and other computing technologies, which have fueled a boom in power-hungry data centers and helped increase electricity demand for the first time in decades.

Citigroup analyst Vikram Bagri wrote last month that Oklo was one of the companies that would benefit from Donald Trump winning the U.S. presidential election. The nuclear name has been involved in the so-called “Trump trade” that has been on and off in recent weeks.

More stories like this can be found at Bloomberg.com