The wave of "nuclear power revival" is sweeping over! Oklo (OKLO.US) reactor commercialization welcomes a key milestone, sprinting towards first criticality.

Focus on small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) Oklo(OKLO.US), a cutting-edge nuclear power developer in the United States, surged more than 6% in pre-market trading on Wednesday. The company announced that the U.S. Energy Corp. has approved the safety analysis documents for its Groves isotope testing reactor in Texas, advancing the project towards full operational authorization. In the current and future global trends of low carbon and complete decarbonization, nuclear energy, as a clean and stable Clean Energy Fuels Corp, has become the favorite energy source of tech giants such as Amazon.com, Inc., Alphabet Inc. Class C, and Microsoft Corporation. This clean, stable, and efficient energy source is expected to provide 24/7 uninterrupted power support for their massive data centers. Therefore, global politicians and tech companies' support for nuclear energy and nuclear power plants may be stronger than ever since the 1970s. The wave of nuclear power revival is spreading across the United States! Oklo aims for the first criticality The most notable change is the comprehensive shift in the U.S. government's attitude towards nuclear reactors, especially since Trump returned to the White House and vigorously promoted the revival of American nuclear power. President Trump has signed multiple executive orders to reform the U.S. nuclear energy industry, including expanding the scale of nuclear energy in the U.S., the nuclear energy supply chain, and shortening the approval process for nuclear projects; this move may herald the revival of nuclear power in the U.S. Due to the positive impact of Trump's so-called "nuclear energy revival orders," this is why Oklo and other nuclear-related stocks in the U.S. stock market have continued to rise. With this latest approval, Groves has moved from the document preparation stage to the final pre-startup review stage by the U.S. Energy Corp. department, which includes preparation for the status review and startup approval, after which the reactor can receive nuclear fuel and start testing. In a statement, Oklo emphasized that the nuclear project has entered the final pre-startup review by the energy department, including preparation for status review and startup approval, before it can receive nuclear fuel, load fuel, and proceed with the startup tests. After receiving startup approval, the company's nuclear facilities will be authorized to receive and load nuclear fuel, allowing them to begin final testing and move towards the company's first criticality; according to the company's previous disclosure, Oklo aims to achieve first criticality in July. The approval of the Groves isotope testing reactor in Texas by the Energy Department signifies not only the advancement of an individual advanced nuclear project but also the United States is moving advanced nuclear energy from "demonstration concept" to the "permit-able, loadable, testable" engineering stage. Although SMR nuclear projects are still facing technical challenges, licensing, fuel supply, and cost curve validation for large-scale power supply, what capital market investors value is the increasing gap in electricity demand for AI data centers, which is pushing small modular reactors, micro-reactors, and existing nuclear assets back into the pricing center of AI data center energy infrastructure. Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte stated in a statement, "Groves is the first advanced nuclear reactor project to receive safety analysis approval, located on privately owned land, with fuel, equipment, and systems all provided by commercial sources and delivered by the private sector." On Wednesday, Oklo announced the acquisition of Creative Engineers Inc., a leader in the nuclear industry's alkali metal engineering field, to enhance sodium and alkali metal system engineering capabilities, which is crucial for the engineering loop of liquid metal-cooled advanced reactors; financial terms were not disclosed. At the end of the day, the logic of tech giants such as Microsoft Corporation, Meta, collectively turning to nuclear power undoubtedly focuses on low carbon constraints and efficiency. More precisely, it is the quality of power that is "highly available, 24/7, low carbon, and able to sign long-term contracts." Microsoft Corporation has signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with Constellation to restart the Three Mile Island Unit 1 and build the Crane Clean Energy Center; Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has also signed a 20-year nuclear power agreement with Constellation to support the operation of the Clinton nuclear power plant in Illinois to obtain clean and reliable nuclear power resources. For the massive construction process of AI data centers currently dominated by tech giants, the power system is undoubtedly the most critical foundation of AI ambition. While wind power and solar photovoltaics can reduce long-term carbon intensity, their intermittency requires storage, backup gas power, and grid dispatch; the core advantage of nuclear power is high capacity factors and stable base load, with the U.S. Energy Corp. stating that nuclear power stabilizes electricity generation for over 92% of the time in 2024, significantly higher than coal, gas, wind, and CECEP Solar Energy. Therefore, what tech giants are purchasing on a large scale is not "sentimental nuclear power," but low-carbon electricity certainty that can be financed, audited, matched with 24/7 computing load, and continuous high-efficiency power supply. With the narrative of "At the End of AI is Electricity" heating up, nuclear power is becoming one of the essential hard foundations of the AI computing power era. The International Energy Agency forecasts that global data center electricity consumption will nearly double from 485 terawatt-hours in 2025 to 950 terawatt-hours in 2030, with AI-specific data centers growing even faster. This also means that the future AI computing power infrastructure arms race will not only be determined by AI GPU/TPU, HBM, CPU, optical interconnect systems, and high-performance Ethernet switches but also by who can quickly lock in grid access, substation capacity, long-term power supply, cooling resources, and low-carbon power credentials. Recently, Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., a financial giant on Wall Street, raised its forecast for the massive electricity demand driven by global data centers by 2030, predicting a 220% expansion from the amount in 2023 (Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.'s previous forecast was +175%), equivalent to adding the power resources of another "top ten consuming country" to the global total. In the view of Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.'s strategic analyst team, the end of AI's large models is electricity - this institution emphasizes that the "power-hungry beast" AI will bring an unprecedented global electricity "super demand cycle" and a "super bull market" for the power sector.