Nuclear start-up Oklo (NYSE: OKLO) was one of the explosive stock market success stories of 2025 (though I probably shouldn’t use the word “explosive” when talking about a company that makes nuclear reactors). Shares hit an all-time high in October shortly after Oklo broke ground on its first-ever Aurora Powerhouse small modular reactor (SMR) facility.
Since then, though, the market hasn’t been kind to the company (or to nuclear start-ups in general). Oklo’s share price has tumbled more than 60% from its October highs:
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Is this a sign of more bad news to come? Or at this price, is Oklo a buy now?
Oklo is a nuclear start-up in its pre-commercial phase. That means the company hasn’t begun commercial operations yet, and doesn’t expect to begin them until late 2027 or early 2028. So metrics like quarterly revenue, profitability, and price-to-sales ratio don’t reflect Oklo’s long-term prospects. Investors will have to wait at least two years before such data will become meaningful.
In the meantime, Oklo’s share price movements are driven by news about the company, its rivals, the overall nuclear industry, and how analysts and major investors view the stock. For example, when Cathie Wood’s Ark Autonomous Technology & Robotics ETF sold a quarter of its position in Oklo in September, the stock price took an immediate hit. The fund has since repurchased more shares than it sold.
In other words, investors who buy shares now are signing up for at least two years of volatility and unexpected price swings before they even find out whether the company’s technology will work as planned. Buying Oklo now is only for investors who can stomach that risk, and even they should only use money they can afford to lose.
One of the biggest hurdles to building and operating a nuclear power plant in the U.S. is the amount of regulatory red tape that needs to be managed. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has to approve the design, construction, and operation of such a facility before it can ever be licensed for commercial power generation. The entire approval process takes years, even if no issues come up that need to be resolved. Until full approval is granted, any commercial nuclear project is essentially stuck in limbo.
Oklo is in the middle of its regulatory journey. It’s proposing to design, build, and operate its reactors, then sell the power it generates to customers, so it’s applying for a combined license from the NRC, which will encompass design, construction, and operational approval. Even though it hasn’t received that combined approval yet from the NRC, its Aurora Powerhouse project in Idaho was accepted into the U.S. Department of Energy’s Reactor Pilot Program (RPP) last year. The RPP’s goal is to speed up testing and deployment of advanced nuclear reactors like Oklo’s.
