OKLO - Oklo Inc.

Operator: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to Oklo's Second Quarter 2026 Financial Results and Webcast. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand the conference over to Sam Doane, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Sam, please go ahead.
Sam Doane: Thank you, operator, and welcome, everyone, to Oklo's Second Quarter 2026 Earnings and Company Update Call. I'm Sam Doane, Oklo's Senior Director of Investor Relations. Joining me today are Jake Dewitte, Oklo's Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer; and Craig Bealmear, our Chief Financial Officer. Earlier today, we released our second quarter 2026 financial results. Today's accompanying slide presentation is available on the Investor Relations section of our website. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that today's discussion, including our prepared remarks and the question-and-answer session that follows, will include forward-looking statements. These statements reflect our current views regarding trends, assumptions, risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed today. We encourage you to review our forward-looking statements disclaimer included in our supplemental presentation. Additional information regarding relevant risks can also be found in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Oklo undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. With that, I'll turn the call over to Jake. Jake?
Jacob Dewitte: Thanks, Sam. I want to start with 2 developments that are expanding the capabilities available to execute advanced nuclear projects in the United States. The first is the U.S. Department of Energy Genesis mission. We see Genesis as a sizable opportunity for Oklo and for the broader nuclear industry. DOE is bringing together its 17 national laboratories, industry, academia, advanced computing infrastructure, experimental facilities, scientific data and artificial intelligence capabilities. In July, DOE announced the first project selections and more than $800 million in mission-wide partner commitments. Prometheus, an INL-led project in which Oklo is participating, was selected for a $60 million Phase I award over 3 years, subject to appropriations. Oklo is participating in multiple projects connected to the Genesis mission. One example is our announced collaboration with NVIDIA and Los Alamos National Laboratory. That work brings together Oklo's reactor and fuel capabilities, NVIDIA's AI infrastructure and Los Alamos' expertise in nuclear fuels and materials. Together, we are working to develop and deploy physics and chemistry-based AI models, digital twins, modeling and simulation tools that can accelerate fuel validation and improve the workflows used to design, deploy and operate nuclear facilities. These are not generic AI applications. They are focused on some of the most time-intensive and technically demanding parts of nuclear deployment. The second development is on DOE's Nuclear Life Cycle Innovation Campus initiative. DOE recently selected Utah, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Idaho as potential host states for campuses that could bring together fuel fabrication, enrichment, recycling, reactor development and deployment, power generation, advanced manufacturing and data centers. We have held productive conversations with all 5 states. We are excited about the potential in each of them and look forward to further engagement as the process advances and the campus plans take shape. The United States is building real execution capabilities across artificial intelligence, national laboratories, fuel infrastructure, manufacturing and deployment. Oklo has deliberately positioned itself to be a central participant in these efforts. Before we move into the quarter's project updates, I want to reinforce how we think about Oklo and reemphasize that we are not building 3 isolated businesses. We are building one integrated nuclear technology platform across power, fuel and isotopes. We see this as a fundamental and distinctive strategy. Power is the anchor. Our Aurora powerhouses are designed to deliver clean, reliable and affordable electricity and heat under long-term commercial arrangements. Fuel is the enabler. No matter how strong the customer demand or how mature the reactor design, no nuclear deployment can scale without a reliable fuel supply. Fuel has always been a focus for Oklo. That is why we are building capabilities across fuel sourcing, fabrication and recycling rather than relying on a single externally managed pathway. Isotopes expand the value of the platform. They allow us to apply many of the same nuclear materials, processing, licensing, procurement and operating capabilities to high-value markets across space, health care, defense, industry and research. Importantly, vertical integration is not simply about expanding the scope of our platform, it can also create greater flexibility in how we fund growth. By investing in fuel sourcing, fabrication, recycling and related infrastructure, Oklo can capture value across the full life cycle of a nuclear asset, including in structures where third-party capital could fund a greater share of powerhouse deployment. Over time, this model could reduce the amount of direct capital Oklo must invest per deployed megawatt while preserving recurring revenue opportunities across power, fuel supply, operations, recycling and isotope production. This flexibility can improve capital efficiency, expand the range of financing structures available to us and support faster, more scalable deployment of the broader platform. Because Oklo develops, owns and operates these assets, we retain the operating experience, procedures and execution knowledge generated across the platform. This slide shows the practical logic behind the integrated platform. The conventional nuclear fuel cycle is largely linear and extremely fragmented. Mining, enrichment, fuel fabrication, power generation and long-term used fuel management are typically handled by different parties. Each participant is usually involved in only one part of the system and most of the remaining fuel value is not returned to productive use. For the advanced nuclear industry, fuel cannot be treated as a procurement item that gets solved at the end of the project. It is one of the most important constraints on deployment. A reactor strategy without a credible and scalable fuel strategy has a fundamental gap. Oklo is building what we believe to be a distinctive and differentiated model. Initial HALEU feedstock can move through our fuel fabrication capabilities to supply Aurora powerhouses and potentially other nuclear fuel customers. Those powerhouses would generate reliable heat and power while creating used fuel that can ultimately be recycled, both of which use proven technologies. Through recycling, usable material can be recovered, returned through fuel fabrication and reused in future powerhouses. Conventional used nuclear fuel could also provide an additional feedstock source over time. In addition, recycling may create opportunities to recover valuable isotope materials. We are not optimizing the system for one core load or a single reactor. We are building the supply, fabrication, recycling and operating capabilities required to support a fleet of reactors that will support the strong demand we continue to see from our potential customers. That creates a flywheel. Power creates recurring fuel demand, scale supports investment in fabrication and recycling. Recycling expands long-term supply and enhances availability in addition to the commercial HALEU fuel markets. Isotopes create additional value from shared nuclear capabilities. Not every part of the system is commercially operating today, but this is the platform we are actively building. It is designed to support repeatable growth across an Oklo fleet. This is where the strategy we just described becomes tangible. We are actively putting capital to work, building physical assets and developing the infrastructure needed to deliver the integrated platform across power, fuel and isotopes. In power, Aurora INL is our anchor deployment and the foundation for future Aurora projects. In Ohio, we are advancing a planned 1.2 gigawatt clean energy campus designed around phased deployment of multiple powerhouses. At Eielson Air Force Base, we are developing an Aurora application designed to provide both electricity and heat for a mission-critical defense installation. In fuel, the Aurora Fuel Fabrication Facility is being developed to fabricate fuel for our first Aurora core. Our advanced fuel center in Tennessee is intended to establish domestic recycling capability and expand the long-term fuel supply available to our fleets. In isotopes, Groves is now complete, and we have reached first criticality and our NRC-licensed Idaho radioisotopes laboratory is supporting initial commercial isotope activities. These assets are at different stages and serve different markets, but they are all part of the same execution strategy. Each project advances an immediate commercial or technical objective while also building capabilities that supports the broader Oklo platform. That includes engineering, licensing, procurement, construction, fuel handling, operations and customer delivery. We are using the capital we have raised to build real assets and the execution infrastructure behind them. This is how the integrated model shown on the prior slide moves from strategy into operation and how we build the foundation to deploy repeatedly rather than one project at a time. Since our last update, we made substantial progress across power, fuel and isotopes business lines within our vertically integrated nuclear technology platform. The most important point is that we are not advancing these business lines independently. We are continuing to build the shared capabilities that support all 3. During the quarter, we strengthened our manufacturing, engineering and specialized systems capabilities through the acquisitions of ARMEC and Creative Engineers Inc. We also expanded our use of artificial intelligence through Prometheus and our work with the national laboratories. Across the portfolio, we are taking actions now to reduce future supply chain constraints. That includes advancing fabrication equipment, qualifying suppliers, strengthening internal manufacturing capabilities, accelerating procurement where appropriate and integrating engineering, procurement and construction planning earlier in the development process. We are not only procuring what is needed for the next project, we are building the talent, processes and capabilities with future deployments in mind. At the asset level, Aurora INL further advanced through DOE authorization and construction. Aurora Ohio moved deeper into execution. Our fuel strategy expanded through continued work with Centrus, recycling planning in Tennessee, and potential use of government materials and our isotope business advanced both technically and commercially. A defining milestone since our last company update was Groves reaching first criticality. That achievement brings together many of the themes on this slide: disciplined capital deployment, commercial procurement, construction, execution, authorization, start-up and operations. We will spend the next several slides explaining what Groves accomplished and why it matters for every part of the Oklo platform. This is what the Groves journey looked like. In September 2025, Groves was an undeveloped site in the Texas Prairies. By March of this year, the facility had taken shape. We had completed the major civil work, installed key systems, and were advancing commissioning and authorization activities. By early August, Groves was an operating nuclear isotope facility and had achieved first criticality. That transformation took a little over 11 months from groundbreaking. The pace is remarkable, not only for the nuclear industry, but for any complex industrial project. In that period, we moved from site preparation through construction, installation, commissioning, fuel loading, start-up testing and operation. And we did not accomplish this by stepping into an existing national laboratory facility or borrowing an established operating organization. We built the project on private land, financed it with private capital and developed the execution and operating capabilities all inside Oklo. This time line is the clearest visual representation of what the team accomplished, but the real value is not just the speed, it is the experience we gained by moving through the full deployment process ourselves. I want to put the scale of this achievement into context. Based on our internal reviews, Groves represents the fastest transition that we are aware of from greenfield to criticality for a full-scale privately funded and privately sited reactor in history. We completed substantial construction in 229 days and reached first criticality in less than a year after groundbreaking. That is a record-setting pace for the nuclear industry, but it is also an extraordinary pace for any complex industrial facility. In that period, the team had to develop in-house the site, design the reactor and the facility, complete civil construction, procure and install specialized equipment, establish the safety basis, source and load fuel, commission the systems, train and qualify operators, complete federal safety reviews and safely bring the reactor critical. Groves was built on private land and financed with private capital. Its major systems, components, fuel and construction services were commercially sourced or manufactured by Oklo. DOE provided rigorous safety oversight and the authorization pathway through the reactor pilot program, while Oklo supplied the capital and led the execution. Groves also became the first reactor pilot program reactor to achieve criticality on privately owned land built from the ground up on a greenfield site. This is an important demonstration of how we are responsibly putting the capital we have raised to work. We are not only funding studies or developing designs for others to build. We are building and operating nuclear assets, and we are doing it at a pace that many people did not believe was possible. But this was not merely an investment in Groves. This was an investment in the organization and capabilities required to deliver future assets. Criticality validated the reactor. The entirety of the completed project validated the execution engine around it. We now have real construction data, trained operators, operating experience, DOE authorization experience and project controls in-house at Oklo. That does not remove the unique work required for future facilities, but it meaningfully reduces execution uncertainty because we have now completed the full journey ourselves from an open field to an operating nuclear facility. The significance of Groves goes far beyond the reactor physics. We did not build the smallest possible experiments simply to reach criticality. We built a complete nuclear facility and in doing so, created the organizational infrastructure required to deploy nuclear assets repeatedly. That capability creation was substantial. We developed a private greenfield site, worked through local permitting and environmental requirements and established the procedures needed to manage construction and nuclear operations on private land. We built the safety basis and engineering documentation required to support DOE review. We created quality assurance programs, configuration controls, document controls and the processes needed to manage technical changes as the facility moved from design through construction and start-up. We established security programs, physical access controls, material controls, emergency preparedness, radiation protection, environmental health and safety procedures and maintenance programs. We built the operating organization. That meant hiring, training, qualifying and managing the people responsible for operating the facility. It meant writing the procedures they would use, testing those procedures and demonstrating to DOE that both the facility and the organization are ready to operate safely. In terms of procurement, we qualified suppliers, negotiated commercial terms, managed purchase orders, completed factory acceptance testing, coordinated delivery and took specialized systems through installation and commissioning. We also developed the project controls behind the work, cost management, schedule management, risk management, execution governance, supplier performance, construction sequencing and readiness planning all had to function together. These were not capabilities we borrowed from a national laboratory or inherited from an established nuclear operator. Oklo built them. We used them and demonstrated them successfully through the Groves project, and now we'll implement them in the deployment of other assets. That distinction matters because our integrated build, own and operate model allows us to retain and leverage the experience. The procedures stay inside Oklo. The experiences with suppliers stay inside Oklo, the operators, project controls, safety programs and lessons learned stay inside Oklo, and we learn from all of them. The next asset being built may be different, and the engineering and safety basis will be specific to each project and each product, but the organization and capabilities required to deliver those assets is no longer theoretical. As a result of the Groves facility, Oklo has developed a functioning nuclear deployment organization that has now designed, procured, constructed, authorized, commissioned and operated a full-scale reactor. That is a significant capability, and it can strengthen execution across every part of the company. This is how the capabilities we built through Groves translate across the broader company. Future Oklo assets do not have to start from 0. Every product line will still require its own engineering, safety analysis, licensing work and execution plan. An Aurora powerhouse is different from an isotope reactor and a fuel facility is different from both. But each future asset can now start with an experienced team that has already moved a nuclear project from an undeveloped site through construction, authorization, commissioning, start-up and operation. That meaningfully changes the starting point. For future isotope facilities, the transfer is the most direct. We have now built a full-scale operating reactor that is repeatable. And now we can reuse and improve the deployment model, operating programs, authorization experience and workforce capabilities established at Groves for future isotope facilities. Our next isotope facility is already in the planning stage. For Aurora powerhouses, we can adapt the project controls, procurement processes, construction sequencing, commissioning practices and procedures, readiness preparation and operating experience to a larger and more complex power facility. For our fuel fabrication and recycling assets, we can apply the nuclear quality systems, material handling procedures, radiological controls, security programs, access controls and authorization experience built through Groves. Our build, own and operate model is important here because Oklo retains and through repetition, iterates and refines these capabilities. We retain the people, we retain the procedures, we retain the cost and schedule data, the operating experience and the lessons learned. Each project can build on the one before it rather than transferring that knowledge to a customer or recreating it with a new operating organization. Groves was an exceptional execution achievement. We believe it also reduced future execution risk across our platform. It did not eliminate the project-specific risks associated with future facilities, but it demonstrated that Oklo can create and operate the organization required to deliver a nuclear asset. Future projects can begin with experienced teams, tested systems, real suppliers and an execution model that has already been used successfully. By building a full-scale nuclear facility, including full-scale civil engineering and construction on private land and fully commercially sourced fuel, we are learning at full scale. That is what makes Groves more than a single reactor milestone. It is reusable execution infrastructure for the rest of Oklo. The experience and capabilities we built through Groves are already informing how we approach our Aurora powerhouse deployments from authorization and construction through procurement, commissioning and operations. At Aurora INL, the primary regulatory milestone this quarter was DOE approval of the Preliminary Documented Safety Analysis or PDSA. This is an important step because the PDSA establishes the preliminary safety basis for the facility, including the hazard analysis, accident analysis, safety controls and design commitments that support continued advancement of final design and construction. With the PDSA approved, the next DOE milestones are completion and approval of the documented safety analysis, which we expect will be nearer to the commercial operations, followed by the readiness review and start-up authorization. This is the same authorization process and steps we successfully utilized for the Groves deployment. Execution at the site is also advancing. Site mobilization is underway and excavation for the reactor area is near completion. In parallel, we continue to progress procurement, engineering and system integration across the project. The objective is to keep the major work streams moving together. Safety review informs design, design informs procurement and construction. Field execution then provides real information that improves planning and coordination across the project. The experience from Groves is already relevant here. We now have firsthand experience managing construction, supplier coordination, DOE safety reviews, readiness preparation and start-up planning within one integrated operating organization. Aurora INL is a larger and more complex asset than the Groves 1 isotope reactor, but we are carrying those execution capabilities forward as we continue progressing toward operations. At Aurora Ohio, we are carrying the execution model from our first deployment into planning for a much larger fleet. During the quarter, we entered into an MOU with Kiewit to support engineering, procurement, construction and execution planning for the initial phase of the Ohio Power campus. This builds on our existing relationship with Kiewit at Aurora INL. The experience we are developing together in Idaho can now inform the work required to supply Meta power from the Oklo 1.2 gigawatt power campus in Ohio. That continuity is important. We are working with Kiewit to carry forward lessons across design, procurement, constructability, scheduling, cost reduction and control and field execution. The objective is to establish repeatable approaches that can support multiple Aurora powerhouses rather than one stand-alone facility. Grid planning is part of that same strategy. We are advancing PJM interconnection applications, transmission planning and related technical studies while integrating those requirements into site layout, infrastructure planning and the sequencing of future phases. Oklo is building for fleet deployment. The work underway at Aurora INL, the capabilities demonstrated through Groves and the planning now advancing with Kiewit in Ohio are intended to compound across projects rather than remain isolated within a single asset. We are also strengthening the internal capabilities that support execution across the platform. During the quarter, we acquired ARMEC and Creative Engineers. Those acquisitions have specialized engineering, manufacturing, testing and capabilities that can support repeatable deployment across the Oklo business lines, while also continuing work with existing third-party customers. ARMEC is already contributing to engineering and procurement work for Aurora INL. We are leveraging the team's experience, manufacturing capabilities and supplier network to support critical component development and improve the connection between design and fabrication. We are also seeing the benefit of ARMEC's deep roots in the Oak Ridge nuclear community. The acquisition expands our access to experienced talent and has increased interest from people who want to contribute to Oklo's mission. The manufacturing impact is beginning to show as well. Multiple new parts have already moved through production since the acquisition, demonstrating how bringing these capabilities closer to our engineering organization can improve the pace of execution. Creative Engineers or CEI, adds roughly 30 years of experience in sodium and other alkali metal systems. Since the acquisition, CEI scope has expanded beyond its prior work with Oklo and now supports both our reactor and recycling organizations. The strategic rationale is straightforward. These acquisitions shorten the feedback loop between engineering, procurement, manufacturing, testing and deployment. The experience gained on one project can then be retained and applied across the next. These internal capabilities also strengthen one of the most important enablers of deployment and power delivery, fuel. Our strategy is to build a diversified domestic fuel supply across sourcing, fabrication and recycling. So future Aurora deployments are not dependent on a single fuel pathway. Our fuel strategy is intentionally diversified because fuel availability remains one of the most important constraints on advanced nuclear deployment. We are not relying on a single supplier, a single feedstock or a single part of the fuel cycle. We are advancing multiple complementary pathways across commercial HALEU, government materials and recycling. On commercial HALEU, the Centrus letter of intent supports the creation of a domestic supply pathway with enough material contemplated to support up to 5 Aurora powerhouses for multiple years. We are also advancing potential government material pathways. DOE selected Oklo for advanced negotiations regarding surplus plutonium that can be fabricated into reactor fuel. If awarded, this fuel could provide an important bridge for earlier deployments while new domestic enrichment capacity continues to scale. That opportunity remains subject to a final DOE agreement, safeguards and material allocation. Equipment required for our Aurora Fuel Fabrication Facility or A3F, is now in production, supporting planned installation and start-up activities in 2027. This builds the fabrication infrastructure needed to convert our first core load of EBR-II used fuel into usable fuel for Aurora INL. We continue advancing our advanced fuel center in Tennessee. Facility and process line engineering are progressing. NRC license application readiness work is underway and civil engineering and site grading permitting are advancing. Our relationship with Standard Nuclear also creates a potential third-party commercial pathway for recycled material. Each fuel pathway opens up supply optionality and strengthens our ability to continue deploying as the fuel market evolves. The Centrus letter of intent advances an important domestic fuel pathway for our Aurora deployments. Under the letter of intent, which anticipates a further definitive agreement, Centrus would supply HALEU for multiple years of initial core and reload needs for up to 5 Aurora powerhouses with deliveries expected to begin in 2029. The agreement could also include prepayments from Oklo, either directly or via customer contributions to support fuel production for our planned Ohio campus build-out. The strategic significance extends beyond the fuel supply itself. In Southern Ohio, several of the critical elements needed for deployment are beginning to come together in one region, domestic HALEU production, Oklo's planned 1.2 gigawatt clean energy campus, customer demand, existing energy infrastructure and execution planning with Kiewit. Building a credible domestic supply pathway helps reduce fuel constraints and provides greater visibility as we advance project development. We are connecting fuel planning directly to customer demand and asset deployment rather than treating fuel as a separate supply chain issue to be addressed at some undefined point in the future. Fuel certainty supports deployment and power delivery certainty. This LOI strengthens both the planned Ohio campus and the domestic advanced nuclear ecosystem developing around it. With that, I will now turn it over to Craig for a financial update. Craig?
Richard Bealmear: Thanks, Jake. 2026 continues to be a strong year for the company as we added strength to our balance sheet while deploying capital into flagship projects across our platform. Oklo's year-to-date net loss for the second quarter was $81.6 million, made up of loss from operations of $124.2 million, offset by $44.5 million of net interest and dividend income. Our year-to-date cash used in operating activities of $65.5 million includes our net loss of $81.6 million, primarily adjusted for noncash charges of $29.9 million from stock-based compensation as well as $13.8 million of net changes in working capital and other adjustments. Year-to-date, cash used in investing activities was $912.7 million, including net cash used for purchases of marketable securities of $743.6 million. In addition, capital spend of $126.9 million increased as we continued planned investments into property, plant and equipment across all 3 business lines. Oklo ended the second quarter with cash and marketable securities of $3 billion, comprising cash and cash equivalents of $1.6 billion and marketable securities of $1.4 billion. This balance includes the additional $1.9 billion of capital generated from the execution of our ATM programs in 2026. We are updating our 2026 cash flow guidance to reflect our strategy to bring forward select project activities to increase execution confidence. Although capital spending through the first half of the year remains below the expected full year range, the spending profile is expected to be weighted towards the second half of the year. We now have better visibility into specific procurement, construction, fuel and project payment milestones supporting the updated ranges on our first-of-a-kind deployments. We now expect cash used in operating activities to be in the range of $120 million to $150 million compared with our prior range of $80 million to $100 million. The increase in operating cash used primarily reflects certain first-of-a-kind project costs at Aurora INL that were expensed, cash used to support the build-out of grid interconnections at Aurora INL and acceleration of early-stage deployment costs on other projects. The increase in operating cash used does not reflect material higher cash burn for general corporate purposes. It reflects research and development costs to support the build-out of our projects. We also now expect cash used for purchases of property, plant and equipment to be in the range of $400 million to $500 million compared with our prior range of $350 million to $450 million. The increase in spending on PP&E is primarily driven by accelerated procurement and construction activity at Aurora INL and an opportunistic fuel purchase at attractive terms to support future isotope projects. Given the strength of our balance sheet and ongoing capital raise activity, we chose to spend opportunistically rather than allow procurement timing to potentially put project delivery at risk. This is not a change in strategy, but rather a reflection of actions taken by Oklo to ensure project delivery across all 3 business lines. As engineering, procurement, construction, fuel and interconnection activities continue to advance for our first-of-a-kind projects, we are gaining greater visibility into opportunities to bring forward critical work that supports Aurora INL's planned 2028 start-up. This is why we have raised capital proactively and built a strong balance sheet. Our liquidity allows us to secure critical path items, advance work when it is ready and make execution decisions to prioritize project schedules. The updated 2026 plan is supported by our existing liquidity of cash and marketable securities, combining to stand at just over $3 billion at the end of the second quarter. Before we close, I want to summarize why we believe Oklo is differentiated. We are building an integrated nuclear platform across power, fuel and isotopes. Our fast reactor technology is designed for simpler, repeatable deployment, while our fuel sourcing fabrication and recycling strategy is intended to strengthen long-term supply security. Our build, own and operate model allows us to retain the economics, operating experience and capabilities created across the platform. Just as importantly, we are now demonstrating that we can execute, translating strategy into constructive assets, operating experience and commercial progress. Together, these elements position Oklo to convert growing customer demand into operating nuclear assets and recurring revenue. With that, thank you again for joining us. We will now open the call up for questions.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Nate Pendleton with Texas Capital Securities.
Nathaniel Pendleton: Congrats on reaching criticality at Groves. I wanted to dig a little bit deeper into the use of plutonium as a bridge fuel. Can you update us on the time line for allocations? And then perhaps more specifically, following the Flattop campaign, how does the measured reactivity coefficients compare to your models with the delayed neutron fraction below U-235, I'd be curious how the feedback mechanisms come together to give you the transient response you're looking for in a fuel.
Jacob Dewitte: Thank you. It's a great question. Actually, we were just talking about that yesterday and the day before, post criticality at Groves, talking about how the comparisons are from the dynamic response and a very fast plutonium system versus the moderated system here at Groves. So anyway, I appreciate it. I think to go to part of your question on the plutonium part, the allocations, we were excited about what came out with respect to the Department of Energy moving forward with us as part of the process here. It's still developing and pending engagement with them in terms of specific allocations. As a reminder, the overall total that they are allocating out in this tranche is about 20 tons, which would be divided up across a couple of recipients, which translates out to quite a bit of HALEU equivalent fuel. Just for a quick recap, the concept here is you take the plutonium and you can blend it with uranium, whether that be natural or depleted or even low enriched depending on how you want to design the system. But to get a HALEU equivalent material, you typically blend it with a depleted or natural uranium stock and you can achieve HALEU equivalent performance at about somewhere between 10% and 13% plutonium content depending on the load, maybe flex up a little bit depending on the exact characteristics of the material. So that is still in development and progress, and we'll keep folks updated as that comes along. With respect to the work we did out at Los Alamos, so that was one of the things that we were excited about that was partnering with the lab to take an assembly, a critical assembly critical for the first time. We did it in a fast reactor system, which was pretty cool for us to do back in December. And we also ran it through various reactivity feedbacks. We didn't just take it at effectively 0 power critical. We did put up to about -- from the calculations about 2 kilowatts or so of power into the system, and we're able to heat it up and then watch the reactivity feedbacks come in and work. Between being a fast system and being a plutonium system with the uranium reflector, it moves quick, but it also demonstrates the incredibly strong reactivity feedback coefficient, particularly the thermal expansion coefficient as well as some of the Doppler effect to be a very tightly coupled, very responsive system where we were able to heat it up until it turned itself basically off by thermal expansion and then even going into maximum reactivity insertion at those temperatures, we could not turn it back on. So a great validation point. The thing that was shocking to me was how fast -- like when I say shocking to me, I've been around fast reactors, I've been involved in fast reactors in the past, but this thing just went so quick and so fast to come like to basically be so responsive. It was like a perfectly tuned and engineered sports car to the max with respect to how quickly it would ramp, but also how quickly it would stabilize. So that was the key thing. So the reactivity feedback coefficients, the overall behavior, all those things that we did, the power maneuvers, all those things that we went through and that came out generally in the expected ranges, I'd say, is what we calculated. It's great to get higher fidelity and great to come in with that. But you're right to note between being a fast system, so you have a very short neutron generation time line, lifetime and then on top of that, having a pretty low delayed neutron fraction compared to U-235, it's a quickly resolving system, but that gives you great like great, frankly, stability and very tight responses in the system. I think I was debriefing the team on the way back from those experiments and said it was I think like driving that system is -- I've never driven one, but it feels like it's probably like the equivalent of going into an F1 car, nothing gets really like faster and more responsive than that system. Everything else we build afterwards and every other kind of system would be a lot more, I would call it, pedestrian, but it was pretty cool to see those kind of dynamics and great validation of the inherent feedback effects in a small fast system like that.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of George Gianarikas with Canaccord Genuity.
George Gianarikas: Could you maybe please provide an update on the radioisotope production road map at Groves, which specific isotopes are you prioritizing for initial production? And when do you anticipate recognizing first revenue?
Jacob Dewitte: Yes, I'll start with what we did at Groves, which is really important. It is a full-scale isotope reactor. That said, we're going to be going through all the various like operational commissioning and everything else all the way out for a bit. As we are positioning ourselves, generally speaking, the key thing we got out of this was execution, right? We got an execution repetition down of building a real full reactor. This wasn't something we put in a national lab. It wasn't something we put at subscale. It was a full-scale, full civil construction, right? We went full excavation. We went 60 feet deep. We put -- we've built this like we will build our future isotope reactors with the ability to take direct lessons learned and iterate on them. So kind of showing, I think one of the things that we try to do is and focus on iterating at scale and not subscale. So that was a big win for us with this plant. And in so doing, got to turn on a full civil reactor in under a year, which is pretty awesome. That said, to get to the point on the isotope production, it's going to depend on a couple of factors, but we anticipate sort of in the next year, like in about 12 months or so, we'll get through all those different capabilities, and we'll start producing some R&D quantities of material. And then in parallel ramping up our next isotope projects that would be producing at more scale. On top of that, we also have additional isotope opportunities that are not in reactor. And where we have our Idaho radiochemistry lab that is NRC licensed and is able to be working with various quantities of material, and we continue to sort of operate there and scale up there. And so there's opportunities on sort of the isotope recovery and refinement side that are independent of the reactor and then the reactor adds a ton of value into those. So those are things we're actively moving into and embarking upon, but those are kind of the time lines for how we're seeing in-reactor production with the opportunity and the potential possibly for some production of -- basically by refining existing inventories, recovering and purifying of other isotopes that are in stranded sources or similar kind of, I'd say, media that we can take out and package into product through that lab that we have the potential to possibly be producing before inside of that 12-month window. And Craig, I don't know if you want to add anything else on the details of that.
Richard Bealmear: Yes, George, just I think we think the first revenue coming out of the isotope business will more likely be from the lab facility in Idaho as opposed to Groves. And as we noted in the material, we've got commercial discussions ongoing with several companies around potential offtake. And revenue, though from that is more likely to come in the first part of next year, just given how we kind of see the timing of all those pieces.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Joseph Osha with Guggenheim.
Joseph Osha: To return to the fuel question, I just want to make sure I understand that you've got the initial couple of loads for INL from EBR-II. Is the plan to go to the blended plutonium after that? Or is Centrus going to come online before that? I just want to make sure I understand the order of operations here.
Jacob Dewitte: Both -- this is the key thing that's really important for us. We're really uniquely positioned between having access -- basically line of sight and partnerships on the Centrus on the HALEU side from commercial production, add in the government materials from EBR-II fuel and then add into that the plutonium fuel. We're uniquely positioned to be able to use a multivariate fuel strategy and then add on top of that recycling and we turn that online to provide kind of this enduring effective fuel capability. That's the key thing. We are versatile in what we can take as fuel. That means we can take a diverse set -- a diverse mix of fuels, and that's super important because that gives us a lot of fuel independence. A lot -- I think this is one of the most severely underestimated things that we're doing as a company is that we have that ability to have and use all of the sources that we can tap into and that we get access to, and we're investing in developing that capability set to be able to do that. But that's a unique characteristic of a fast reactor, and we're designing for that, right? And so it's really a blended mix. The plan and the goal is to be able to take and receive all the different fuel sources we have that stretches the fuel resources we have, while we spin up recycling capabilities, while we support enrichment expansion, and that's how we see this all come together with respect to being able to fuel these things. So to put it in summary, first reactor from EBR-II recovered material scale-up is supported by plutonium blended plutonium fuel as a bridging fuel to ramp with the uranium enrichment scale up. That then goes on, right? And for a very, very long time, our use of enriched uranium and then at the end of the day, recycling, which can sort of offset the need for everything because of its ability to extend the resource so tremendously. So then you have the recycling that bolts on on the back side of that. So it's a 3-pronged approach that's an enduring advantage that you can't really touch. And just to zoom out to like the 100,000-foot view, fast reactors with recycling like what we're developing have the potential to tap into the known resources and reserves of heavy metals on this planet and power the entire planet energy needs for billions of years, right? The first principle of the physics support that. That's why that was something people wanted to do. That's why we're doing that.
Richard Bealmear: And just may add to Jake's question, because we're progressing more than one fuel pathway, that optimization of kind of which fuel is going to come next in the pecking order is actually something that we keep up to date. But it's -- we keep up to date because we keep pushing on more commercial opportunities to make sure that for us, fuel is not a constraint, it's an opportunity.
Joseph Osha: And just -- I would assume that we get maybe a little more detail once we know what the allocation of plutonium is going to look like in the DOE because that.
Richard Bealmear: Correct.
Joseph Osha: And can you remind me, and I'll go away in just a minute, what the expected timing is on that allocation?
Richard Bealmear: That timing is really being not dictated by Oklo. So I would not want to throw out a date because it's really not under our control. But I guess the flippant answer is we're closer than we were.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Ryan Pfingst with B. Riley Securities.
Ryan Pfingst: Congrats on the criticality milestone. I wanted to ask about the Nuclear Life Cycle Innovation Campuses and what that program could do for a project like the advanced fuel center in Tennessee in terms of premium capital or other resources.
Jacob Dewitte: Yes. I mean I think what we see with that is the, I would say, full-throated support of moving forward into a much more, I would say, effective and constructive and scalable solution on sort of nuclear fuel, frankly, life cycle management. What that means is, I think the approaches of the past have not exactly scaled the best in any form of execution, namely Yucca Mountain. And so the idea here is to open up different disposition pathways that also capture innovations in the technology front. Again, this is probably another part like this specific piece of what's happening, I should say this. The NLCIC initiative is also probably one of the more widely underappreciated sort of efforts at the policy level that has incredible potential impact on the, frankly, future of energy for the world, especially in the United States because what it's doing is saying, hey, let's get communities who want to take this material and see the upside of being able to host a combined ecosystem on the life cycle side for used fuel coming in, recycling being a cornerstone piece of that. Disposing waste through more innovative methods like boreholes, which are far more capital efficient, scalable and just better than mined repositories in most all regards. And then advanced fuel fabrication that can take the recycled material, the ecosystem that bolts on to isotopes from recycled material, the fuel from the fabrication of recycled fuel into basically fast reactors and then the power that comes from it to then support other parts of the nuclear ecosystem and other industry, right, because you start creating these kind of energy super campuses or super regional campuses that happen because of what happens there, that's a tremendous thing to be able to tap into. If you think about the used fuel inventories in the United States today, it's more than Saudi Arabia's equivalent of oil energy, right, in terms of content. I mean it's almost the entire world's energy supplies that we know of in terms of known oil reserves. And so these states, if you get 3 states that get this, they're getting more than one Saudi Arabia of energy content they get to basically have in-house, in state. And then every year, they would get replenished by about a Norway worth of energy, right? Like that's incredible. And I don't mean annual production. I'm talking about known total oil reserves equivalent, right? This is what they would have. So the economic implications are tremendous. There are a number of things that will flow from this at the capital level, right? And a lot of that's being pursued and developed, but it's a whole government approach to say, "Hey, how do we manage this and solve for this?" And the fact that you had -- I think it was 26 states step up and say, "Hey, we're interested in taking this material." I mean, that was incredible. And then clearly shows that it was competitive and the 5 that have been downselected are clearly the ones that are going to sort of raise their hand and show we're eager to be partners here. So -- but we're very excited about it for Oklo because of the opportunity to play in that ecosystem. If you think about the key enablers there, it's recycling, it's reactors to use recycled fuel, it's the opportunities to monetize and sell the co-products of recycling. I mean that's what we do. So we're very excited about this. And I think it's a tremendous move to sort of unleash the ecosystem around, frankly, advancing nuclear innovation.
Operator: Your next question comes from Brian Lee with Goldman Sachs.
Brian Lee: Maybe just a 2-part question. I'd be curious if you could provide a bit more detail on what exactly is being pulled forward with the higher CapEx budget this year and any way to quantify the pull forward in terms of whether it's quarters or months that you are accelerating the plan? And then secondarily, pretty big step-up in OpEx here this quarter, both R&D and G&A. Can you kind of walk us through that and how to think about the OpEx growth for the balance of the year?
Richard Bealmear: Yes, Brian, I'll take both of those. I think in terms of the capital spend and pull forward, it's not just dedicated to one business, but a good portion of that is related to the project at Idaho National Labs or INL. And it's really around just wanting to make sure that we've got long lead time procurement spend in place and activity in place and also making sure that we've got things in place for the interconnection to the grid. And it's less about bringing forward the time line because 2028 is still the targeted go-live, but it's more about creating more assurance for that and making sure that long lead time items don't impact the critical path for those projects. In terms of the OpEx spend, I think we are growing headcount. And I'd say most of that growth, though, is not for functional growth. It's really for engineering and technical growth. Part of what drove a little bit of that higher OpEx, and I think I said this at the time of the initial guidance is when you're doing a first-of-a-kind project, there's always a little bit of accounting interrogation in terms of what needs to be capitalized versus what needs to be expensed. And it just ends up that we're just needing to expense a few more items in the quarter just given the nature of the spend. But really, all of this is about project delivery, project assurance and just making sure that we can hit the critical path. And for Aurora INL, it's not just hitting the critical path on the powerhouse itself, but we're also in good situation to start equipment delivery and installation at the Aurora Fuel Fabrication Facility that Ryan Webster and team lead so we can start fabricating fuel for that first powerhouse that will go live in 2028.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Christopher Souther with Truist.
Christopher Souther: Congrats on the progress here. Can you give us a sense as to how the all-in spend at Aurora INL is shaking out with Kiewit? Just any kind of update around the costs that you expect for that first-of-a-kind project would be very helpful. And then I know we're getting EBR-II fuel from the DOE there, but are we able to secure the full fuel for the 75-megawatt operating level? I wasn't sure if that was updated yet.
Jacob Dewitte: Yes, I'll start in inverse order on the fuel and then hand it to Craig for the cost part. So yes, between what we've -- we're working with Centrus and additional -- additionally, what we're seeing evolving on the plutonium side, we feel quite confident in having all the fuel we need for that plant to run at full power without any changes in course.
Richard Bealmear: Yes. And in terms of costs, we're not yet providing full guidance on that parcel because we're still narrowing in on what total cost for the project is going to be with Kiewit as well as looking at what will be the glide path of not just cost for the Idaho project, but the future projects that more likely than not for power will take place in the Ohio campus. As we narrow in on those numbers through the rest of this year, when we've got a more tight number to provide to the market, we'll do that then.
Christopher Souther: Got it. Okay. That makes sense. And then you had called out at the beginning of the call partner capital opportunities. I just wanted to get a sense as you're looking at the different business lines here, historically, you've talked about on the fuel side, some partner opportunities. But on the powerhouse side, is that an area where you're having more active discussions? Or is it still just kind of reiterating the optionality over time within the business model? I was curious if there was emphasis there intentionally.
Richard Bealmear: Yes. I'd say if you look at the power side of -- the customer a bit of your question, it's really around -- we've already had the Meta payment. We've had the Equinix payment. And so it does feel like those discussions are a little bit more advanced. But what Jake talked earlier about the NLCIC campuses and what excites me about that, maybe with my oil and gas background is this is an opportunity to create new energy corridors across the United States. And those are other ways that people could invest at the asset and project level in our business. So in terms of the third leg of the stool, our isotopes business, that's probably where we're at most of the early days in terms of what a customer investment in the business could look like. We have brought on in the quarter, a person by the name of Ray Wang, who's our business unit leader for that business. And I know it's one of the things that's very high on Ray's radar screen as well.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Jeremy Tonet with JPMorgan.
Jeremy Tonet: Congratulations on criticality.
Jacob Dewitte: It was pretty cool.
Jeremy Tonet: Just wanted to see, I guess, you've successfully been using M&A as a tool to bulk up, I guess, the supply chain. I'm just wondering, along those lines, are there any other areas you think that would be of interest to you and that would make sense to kind of pursue more?
Richard Bealmear: I mean I won't go deep into the things we are looking at, but we do continue to look. I think it's things that would still be in the scale of ARMEC and CEI, but it really is about when we look at building out asset deployment capability in the firm, you can do that by hiring staff so building the capability internally or you can go and buy it. And I think when we see those buying opportunities, it's really around the strength of the team and the capability that we can bring in-house. And we're really pleased with what we did in that regard in the quarter and looking at it as an accelerator. I think there's one thing that people can take away from this call, it's like we are putting assets on the ground. We've successfully gone critical. And now we're really just looking at more that we can do to provide assurance around asset deployment for all 3 businesses. So if we see an opportunity to scale that capability at the right price point, then we've got the capital to do that, and we'll look to execute on those opportunities.
Jeremy Tonet: Great. And then maybe just given the progress that you've had, just wondering if this has impacted, I guess, the pace or the tone of commercial conversations as far as offtake is concerned.
Richard Bealmear: I would say that every time we do something, it creates more credibility, and it does help those conversations.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Rinny Singh with Bank of America.
Rinny Singh: I guess just focusing on the customer landscape. As you're kind of looking at these milestones hit and customers are kind of looking at the regulatory, the fueling side and the actual execution and cost side of things, how -- like what -- out of those like buckets, what's kind of giving them the most confidence in moving forward? And kind of what do you think are the pathway to watch essentially from here in those buckets?
Richard Bealmear: Yes, Rinny, when I talk about the business, it does feel like we've got, in a sense, unconstrained demand. So how do we unconstrain the supply for that? And I think it kind of -- and I think I've always talked about there's regulatory deconstraining, there is fuel, there's procurement construction and making sure we've got the capital. It's almost like though, I think it depends on the customer. I think -- and their level of education, I think some are looking more to the regulatory pathway and the regulatory acceleration. Others are looking to fuel. But I think if you look at everything we're doing, we're working to deconstrain the system across all those parameters so we can meet that demand. I'll also say that the customers who are -- the more they come up the learning curve, though, I think the more they recognize the importance of fuel and our fuel diversification strategy really does resonate with them.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Derek Soderberg with Cantor Fitzgerald.
Derek Soderberg: Just one question for me around interconnection. I was wondering if you could provide a status update on the specific PJM interconnection applications required for the near-term deployment road map. Can you guys talk about where you sit in the interconnection queue and broadly, do you see any potential setbacks just given some of the interconnection challenges and backlog?
Richard Bealmear: We are participating in the interconnection process and have more than one opportunity, I guess, on the docket with PJM along with others. And really, to go to a bit of your question, what's the watch point, it's just the turnaround time on that and just making sure that we're staying on top of it. Mike Donohue, who we brought in over a year ago and his team are leading that effort. And I think they bring a lot of depth of expertise. But it is an important watch point, which is why we are, I think, on top of it and making sure that we're not counting on just one avenue or one path to put power on the grid in that area.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Jed Dorsheimer with William Blair.
Jonathan Dorsheimer: Just Jake, a question for you on the down selection process. So I guess 2 parts. First is, historically, in markets like this, we've seen sort of a down selection to 2 or 3 designs. Do you think that advanced reactors will go through that same process? And then secondly, tech is classically losing the politics while having the policy around data centers. I'm just curious how you see the nuclear industry classically lost a similar battle around the technology that set us back 30 years. I'm curious what your thoughts might be on how to resolve the pitchforks that have come out around data centers, which are based not on facts, but on more emotions and feelings.
Jacob Dewitte: Yes. It's a great question. Thank you. I appreciate it. I think what I see is the opportunity in the market space is incredibly large. And I think there's kind of -- when I think about the industry, there's a tale of a couple of sort of cities. You kind of have the legacy approach that's going to -- has a track record behind pieces, but has some significant, I would say, cost floors based on sort of the way things have been done and not necessarily leaning into more modernized ways of -- well, frankly, of everything needed to deliver nuclear plants. I mean, look, we just built our first nuclear reactor. And by all the metrics, we can research, it's set a world record and the fastest fully privately built reactor ever. Why? Because we can do things better and differently, right? We're leaning into that as not just Oklo, but as an industry. So the opportunity space is just amazingly cool. That said, so you have that, right? So I guess what I'm trying to say is that naturally to me is going to create a more vibrant ecosystem. And you have different applications and opportunities and different need sets across the space from maybe small microreactors that serve niche applications and opportunities to scalable, small to midsized reactors that have unique deployment opportunities to the very large reactors that build off of strong legacies. I think you're going to see multiple players in each of those spaces, too, in the near to midterm scale up and go, not to mention different fuel cycle strategies and different -- not just electric output energy products, in other words, heat. And so it's pretty attractive, right? And I think one thing that's often forgotten is on the heat side, one of the key things there is like really all types of reactors can deliver useful heat for product heat. The vast majority of product is well served under 200 degrees centigrade, which all reactors can deliver to. Now there's some niche applications that get above 400 degrees centigrade. We can deliver between 400 and 450 comfortably. We can get a little bit higher in time. But that serves the vast majority of reachable opportunities there. And then you have like a big island of heat needs that are well over 1,000 degrees, which, frankly, the cost to deliver nuclear heat into with all the materials and requirements you need, just to me doesn't make any sense compared to electrifying it or making different heat carriers, whether that be synthetic hydrocarbons or hydrogen or whatever it might be. So long story short, the heat market as well is going to drive and see different applications of different types. So I actually think it's going to be a pretty vibrant ecosystem. Now over time -- well, sorry, carbon ecosystem. What's in common with all those is they all produce used fuel. What are we doing? The ability to recycle, right? So it gives us a huge opportunity to support everything, not just our reactors, but everything that gets built. And then that producing fuel helps us make our reactors and other reactors that can use this material most efficiently, even more economically scalable, which ultimately, to me, does converge at some long form of scale towards fast reactors and recycling because of the inherent benefits that recycling and fast reactors have. So over long time scales, I'm talking about century plus time scales, I think physics will drive that convergence. Additionally, I think then on the other side of things with respect to I think the data center side and what we're seeing, interestingly, where we built the Groves reactor in Texas, there's a lot of concern. You see a lot of no data center signs, a lot of excitement and enthusiasm about what we're doing, which is cool and some result of -- partial result of intentionality in how we've engaged and worked with folks here. But I think what we're also observing is that the data center community and the hyperscalers have had their heads kind of low and they need to stand up and start telling the story about what's really going on here. And I think we're finding them starting to do that. And I'm also seeing that we're seeing a very aggressively shortened cycle around the perception gaps. I think there's policy dynamics and there's community engagement that can really go a long way that people are now, I think, waking up to and catching up there, which is great on the hyperscaler deployment side. But I also think that we see -- to me, still one of the great unlocks on nuclear was as silly as it sounds, the Internet, like people were fed misinformation and disinformation actively by anti-nuclear groups for decades, and that poisoned the well for a while until folks started to have open access information where they could actually look up stuff and realize, oh, nuclear is cool, right? And a lot of the gateway to that was advanced nuclear. And then people realize, well, actually, all nuclear is really cool, and they've been kind of misinformed and distracted. And now I think we see -- I think there's a similar dynamic that's going to be emerging in the data center side, but they have to take advantage of the moment to do that, and they have to get in front of it play catch up and get in front of it in different areas. And there are different communities that really want them that understand them, and they just need to tell the story of like, hey, actually, a lot of next-generation systems are very, very low water usage, all these other things that kind of make a big difference in terms of how people actually perceive them and lean into that. So that's my view and my optimism on that front. But we're seeing that firsthand, right, where we're active and where we're building and developing, especially in Ohio, where folks are really stepping up and saying, okay, we need to change how we talk about this, and we need to engage the community and we need to have people understand what these things really are, and we're seeing those movements start to catch and take hold. But there's some work to do, right? There's definitely some work to do. But I also think that some of the high-level news coverage on some of this is a little more focused on the more -- towards the negative, it's more sensationalized than I think what we're seeing on the ground in some places.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Max Hopkins with CL King.
Maxwell Hopkins: I just wanted to ask on the NVIDIA and Microsoft partnerships. Obviously, AI is now permeating everywhere. Is there a specific function of Oklo's strategy that you think is going to benefit most from putting AI into the strategy? And how fast can that accelerate time for commercialization?
Jacob Dewitte: Yes. I think -- I mean there's a lot there. And it's easy to point to AI is everywhere and everyone is using for every single thing. And I would argue there's the administrative usage, which does help on things. But on the actual design analysis, data processing side, it is, I personally think, hard to overstate how effective and how like significant the impacts are going to be. So there's kind of 2 major things we talked about here. There's our partnership with Los Alamos and NVIDIA, which is applying state-of-the-art expertise from almost state-of-the-art compute from NVIDIA and state-of-the-art intent and practical application and fabrication expertise from Oklo into a combined sort of ecosystem model to modernize how we look at, manage and treat -- sorry, design to accommodate and fabricate fuel from plutonium inventories. And that matters a lot because taking the material and putting it into a fabricable form, there's losses and inefficiencies. There's also dynamics around fuel performance. And there's a lot of data out there that has been in different circles and pots, but never really aggregated in a way that you couldn't do -- let me rephrase this. You just can't do quite as effectively without AI, frankly. That makes a big difference in accelerating the usability and expanding the usability of different materials there and extending the resource. That's cool, very exciting piece of what we're doing. Additionally, there's Prometheus as part of the Project Genesis efforts, which is broadly unlocking agentic AI design capabilities at risk of using all the buzzwords, but literally building out AI design agents to, frankly, expand and accelerate the entire design characterization space, the analysis space, uncertainty quantification space. All of that translates to high-performing designs sooner and more margin recovery sooner in designs that allow you to get more power from each system. So in other words, what that translates to is lower cost of dollars to get to more power extracted per capital investment of the plants. That is happening in real time. We're seeing it because we're accelerating some of those reactor design workflows by I mean, it's incredible, right? We're doing work that would take weeks to -- I mean, months or several months, getting it done in less than a day, right? We're getting it done in hours. And we're seeing that on top of that, we're also finding a lot of applications that are going to play out in other parts of the technology system and stack. We used it to help us accelerate commissioning the Groves reactor with the control systems we had. We're able to use that in a couple of different applications where we were able to bring in AI for supporting out like the future iterations on the control platform that Groves gives us to move more quickly on and update that into potential applications to accelerate and improve performance on Groves to Aurora or whatever comes off all these kind of plants. So like it's going to be very exciting to see how this comes forward. And we're -- I don't even think we're in the early innings. We're not even in like the warm-up period or maybe we're basically in warm-up right now. But it's hard to overstate the benefits and the super sort of acceleration that it gives the design engineers and then how you can automate that translation into documentation with such high quality, like it's incredible and documentation is such a key thing for all of this. So it's pretty exciting. It's not just buzzwords, it's not just the usage of it, it's actually being impactful. And I think in some of these industries like this, some of these impacts might be some of the largest that there are.
Richard Bealmear: And Jake, it's further down the road, but when I think about Oklo having a fleet of powerhouses, having multiple radioisotope facilities and all of the plant operating data that is going to come out of that and the optimization around that is also -- I know it's further down the road, but it's really cool to think about what artificial intelligence can do in that space as well.
Maxwell Hopkins: I appreciate the clarity and congratulations on all the progress. It's very exciting.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Sherif Elmaghrabi with BTIG.
Sherif Elmaghrabi: I guess I apologize if I missed this earlier in the call, but at a high level, since you can achieve HALEU equivalent performance by blending plutonium with LEU, curious why that isn't a long-term answer to reactor power given that's fuel that's available today.
Jacob Dewitte: Yes. I mean -- so a couple of things. One, yes, you can achieve that performance. In fact, plutonium is an even better fuel. But plutonium is limited inventory, and that's not something that makes a lot of sense to get into the game of producing more fuel given kind of like the cost and focus of production of just that material. But when you extrapolate transuranic material that's produced from recycling gives a somewhat similar performance, and that's why we go to that. But this is why the mix is so important, right? Like the amount of plutonium material is sizable. It supports a couple of gigawatts -- up to potentially a couple of gigawatts depending on allocations. That's a great bridging fuel to then transition to HALEU and then also to recycling, right? And so that's why this multipronged strategy makes sense both from a scalability perspective, but also total cadence perspective. But yes, like it's a tremendous resource. And to be honest, this is what the first tranche is. There's more of this kind of material and similar material that might be deemed an excess in inventory that internationally country may want to get rid of because they look at it as a liability that could open the door for significantly more of that plutonium material to be used as an expanded bridge fuel. It's pretty attractive. But the terminal state to me for nuclear is ultimately fast reactors in recycling with transuranic fuel out of the recycling side because, again, that gives you, but at a lower cost, basically a commensurate type performance, but also nearly like practically, I would say, almost limitless source of material because of the ability to tap into the known heavy metal reserves we have on the planet.
Operator: Your final question comes from the line of Craig Shere with Tuohy.
Craig Shere: Data centers are obviously the most exciting opportunity, but there's plenty of off-grid and industrial heat applications for SMRs and your Alaska Air Force deployment -- base deployment certainly looks to be more environmentally focused than power focused. I wonder if you could elaborate. You kind of already alluded to the 400, 450 degree centigrade run rate, but maybe you could discuss a little more the comparison and contrast between Aurora powerhouses, potential thermal integration and output versus some of your SMR peers with high-temperature gas-cooled designs running on TRISO fuel.
Jacob Dewitte: Yes. I mean -- so I think that's one of the key things is a huge amount of process heat that we see in the market is very well serviced below 450. The marginal increase in market opportunities above that to like 600, 650 are present. I'll say that -- but they're pretty like marginal at best, they're pretty small. And then getting to temperatures then like above that, there's not a lot of exciting things until you get above 850, 1,000 centigrade. And then above that, there's some interesting opportunities, especially when you get closer to 1,200, 1,400. I mean there's no economically viable way to move heat at those temperatures at those distances. I mean the materials you would need are incredibly expensive and vastly like underdeveloped. Just doesn't make sense compared to converting the energy into different forms. But you can use that heat I mean, since you can do so much with sub-400, 450C heat, that's where so much of the market is. And at the end of the day, like it's about what are the effective cost of getting to those points. So one of the arguments and one of the -- if you think about the history of nuclear, a lot of the technology development that happened was centered around articulated research and development market potentials and opportunities and needs. And one of the justifying reasons to support some of these higher temperature operations was sort of the -- well, you could open up these other kind of niche heat opportunities if you get slightly above the normal temperature ranges. But even above like 550, right, somewhere between 500, 600 C, that's -- and the fuel can extend to that point in terms of process heat output. There's probably a little more technology work to get there, but I think most of the metallurgists will feel comfortable there. Once you get above that, you start having to go to super alloys that are just cost prohibitive to transport heat at different distances. So at the end of the day, you're basically going to collapse like most things into non-light water reactors are going to deliver heat economically all about the same temperature, whether it's sodium, whether it's lead, whether it's salt, whether it's gas and fuel type just won't matter as much there. But at the end of the day, right, it will take a little time to get there. And in the meantime, you can serve and do it quite cost effectively at those lower temperature levels. And given the inherent benefits of like pressurized water in terms of power density and then sodium in terms of even better power density when heat is your output and you can serve it in those markets, this has some pretty sizable advantages and the sort of diminishing marginal opportunity set to get to higher temperatures just isn't quite -- it's just not quite as justified, I guess. So I think at the end of the day, you're going to see some opportunities and applications because that's what the R&D narrative was for a long time. But the reality is most of those markets are serving that size. And I think what we see is a lot of those customers are excited about the opportunity to get heat for a number of different industrial applications. And the art of the possible is still radically underexplored there because most, I would say, are industrial entities that are, I would call them eager to be market followers, but not first customers. And so part of what we're excited about is on the data center side, there's actually some opportunities, including some of the things we announced last year with Vertiv in terms of being able to do heat and power kind of -- well, basically heat-driven cooling systems and then also what we're doing with the Air Force, a lot of this lines up pretty attractively for a pretty cool outlook for heat applications for sodium systems that are quite compelling.
Operator: We have reached the end of our Q&A session. I will now turn the call back to Jake Dewitte, CEO, for closing remarks.
Jacob Dewitte: Yes. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. It's been an exciting last quarter, exciting couple of days for us turning on our first reactor. I think one of the cool things is just going back to sum this up, what we've proven is execution and turning on a full asset, and we did it the entire stack, if you will. We did the full stack. A big differentiation between what we did and what was otherwise done in the reactor pilot program was we built a full nuclear reactor with full civil excavation, with full construction. We didn't just put a slab on the ground and put a kind of a loose fabric building up or steel tent building up. We didn't go into another laboratory and do it the same way in those areas. We thought we could see a lot of value in doing that, and we think that there's reasons why we did work similar to that, including the plutonium work we did out at Nevada. But for us, we wanted to go and learn at scale. And that's what we saw the reactor pilot program enabling us to do, build a full-scale reactor, do the full civil construction, build it so it was repeatable, buy everything or make everything ourselves based on what we needed to do, learn then how to scale that forward so that we can build on this experience that, learn and do it better the next time and also set up the capability with all of our own in-house operators to actually commission the facility, to start it up and to operate it ourselves. We're the only company that did all of those things, and that was what was really exciting about this experience was we were able to do all of that internally. And now we have the blueprints to go to the next -- to do it again and again and again, and we know what it takes to do that, right, because we've done it now. And the delta between what we do here versus the next one is relatively small because it's just incorporating lessons learned. And that's a huge, huge, huge advantage for us now that we can say and sort of stand up and say, okay, we as a company, have now designed and built and commissioned and turned on a full-scale reactor that now we can repeat, right, again and again and again. And then carry those lessons over into the things that are not as directly the same, so things like Aurora on the power side. Same thing with commissioning and setting up nuclear facilities that have complexity to them like fuel fabrication and recycling. So we're proving out execution and executing at scale and iterating at scale, which has always been an important thing for us to move quickly. So we're very excited about that. Very proud of the team for how -- what it took to get here, especially over the last few days. I'm really excited we're able to celebrate that, and now we're eager to move on to what's next. So thank you all for joining us today, and I appreciate the time.
Operator: This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.