Selected for Trump’s nuclear power acceleration program! Is OKLO and X-Energy’s moment in the spotlight here?

The AI boom is escalating into a smokeless 'battle for power.'

On July 22, $Oklo Inc (OKLO.US)$and $X-Energy (XE.US)$these two advanced nuclear reactor suppliers officially joined the nuclear energy acceleration initiative led by the Trump administration.

Spurred by this news, both companies’ share prices surged sharply—Oklo closed up 6.31% and gained another nearly 6% in after-hours trading; X-Energy closed up 7.22% and rose more than 6% after hours.

Notably, both companies’ stocks have fallen roughly 50% from their year-to-date highs: Oklo dropped from its peak of $114 to about half that value, while XE, which went public in April, declined from a high of $37 to around $16.

'Smart money' is positioning early

In fact, yesterday's market surge was not without precedent. ARK Investment Management, led by 'Cathie Wood'—renowned for spotting disruptive innovation—had already been steadily building positions in the nuclear energy sector.

As early as $X-Energy (XE.US)$at its IPO, 'Cathie Wood' aggressively bought over 4 million shares.Recently, amid stock price volatility at both companies, ARK funds further increased their positions against the market trend, adding over 2 million shares of $X-Energy (XE.US)$ alone in July, while continuing to purchase shares of $Oklo Inc (OKLO.US)$ . The institutional capital movements send a clear signal: they are firmly positioning these two companies as core holdings in ARK’s next-generation clean energy portfolio.

So, what are the key components of this highly anticipated initiative? Why is the U.S. government making such a significant move now? And what historic opportunities will this bring to these two pivotal companies? This article will provide fellow investors with an in-depth breakdown.

Unpacking the $200 Million 'Nuclear Power Acceleration Program'

This program carries strong 'national-level backing' and forms a core part of the earlier AI Energy Initiative, with a total scale of$200 million. Mainly includes:

Funding support: Over the next three years, top-tier research institutions including U.S. National Laboratories and the University of Texas at Austinwill share $60 million in funding supportand jointly advance project implementation with tech giants such as Microsoft and NVIDIA.

Streamlining approval timelines: The core objective is to fully 'unlock' the nuclear power industry—significantly shortening the design, approval, and construction timelines for new nuclear power plants,while substantially reducing operational labor costs through iterative automation technologies.

To meet the energy demands driven by AI, the U.S. Department of Energy has previously taken multiple measures to revive nuclear power, including a separate initiative proposing to allocate weapons-grade plutonium left over from the Cold War to commercial nuclear developers.

Why now?

The White House has chosen this moment to mobilize the nation's full strength to accelerate nuclear power becausethe bottlenecks in physical computing power and residential electricity demand are approaching a critical threshold。

According to the latest report from BloombergNEF (BNEF), electricity demand from data centers across the U.S. is spiraling out of control. Currently, data centers account for 5.9% of total U.S. electricity consumption, projected to rise to 12% by 2030, and further climb to 20% by 2035. This means their share of electricity consumption will more than triple in less than a decade.

Even more striking is the absolute increase. BNEF has significantly revised its 2035 forecast for data center power demand upward by 83% to 194 gigawattstile (GW)1 gigawatt is roughly equivalent to the installed capacity of a conventional nuclear power plant,which means data centers alone will require electricity equivalent to nearly 200 conventional nuclear power plants in the future.BNEF analyst Lloyd Arnold vividly noted, "For every five units of electricity generated by U.S. coal plants, gas-fired plants, and solar farms, one unit goes directly to data centers."

In addition,$NVIDIA (NVDA.US)$ Tech giants like OpenAI have publicly warned that insufficient energy supply is becoming the biggest obstacle to AI expansion. The White House must implement top-level planning to provide a solid energy foundation for AI—the core engine of the U.S. economy.

The disruptive advantages of SMRs (Small Modular Reactors)

The power consumption of AI data centers is not growing linearly—it is exploding exponentially. Traditional wind and solar power are constrained by weather conditions and energy storage bottlenecks, making them incapable of delivering the 24/7 baseload power required by AI computing. Meanwhile, conventional large-scale nuclear plants often cost tens of billions of dollars and take over a decade to build—too slow to address urgent near-term needs.

Amid this acute supply-demand imbalance, $Oklo Inc (OKLO.US)$ And, $X-Energy (XE.US)$ next-generation micro nuclear reactors, represented by SMRs, perfectly meet this critical need. Compared to large traditional nuclear plants with long construction timelines, they offer disruptive advantages:SMRs feature modular designs that allow phased expansion, making them well-suited to scenarios like AI data centers—where electricity demand rises rapidly and cannot wait years for completion.

These two core companies also differ significantly in their business models, and both stand to benefit substantially from government initiatives:

$Oklo Inc (OKLO.US)$： Backed by OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman, its core business model is BOO (Build-Own-Operate). It does not sell reactor hardware; instead, it earns stable electricity revenue through long-term Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) with data centers (similar to 'electricity-as-a-service'). Accelerated government approvals can directly shorten the time gap between reactor construction and grid connection for revenue generation, significantly improving its early-stage cash flow.

$X-Energy (XE.US)$：primarily focused onXe-100 high-temperature gas-cooled reactor and its proprietary TRISO meltdown-resistant fuel. As a key beneficiary of the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP), X-energy has received billions of dollars in R&D subsidies from the government, which is also heavily funding the construction of the first commercial-scale TRISO-X fuel fabrication facility in Tennessee to address critical fuel supply bottlenecks. More importantly, the high-temperature steam generated by the Xe-100 can also be used directly for industrial decarbonization, enabling X-energy to tap into a broad 'power-plus-heat' dual-revenue market beyond data centers.

Risk Disclaimer and Conclusion

Despite the grand narrative, investors should still maintain a level of rationality.

Currently, advanced micro nuclear reactors have not yet achieved true commercial grid-connected operation anywhere in the U.S. Moving from blueprints to mass production, these companies still face significant external hurdles—including lengthy regulatory approval cycles, fragile fuel supply chains, and nearly inevitable cost overruns in their first-of-a-kind projects.

However, when national-level policy support, tech giants’ substantial investments, and Wall Street’s venture capital converge on the same track, a profound energy revolution has become unstoppable.Oklo and X-Energy’s moments in the spotlight are just a glimpse—the supercycle of 'AI + nuclear power' has only just turned its first page.

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