Nuclear fission start-up backed by Sam Altman to go public

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A nuclear fission start-up backed by Sam Altman is to go public through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company set up by the OpenAI chief executive in a deal that values the business at $850mn. 

Oklo, where Altman serves as board chair, has agreed a transaction with AltC Acquisition Corporation, a blank-cheque company set up by Altman and former Citigroup executive Michael Klein. 

The transaction between Oklo and AltC is unusual because Altman is involved with both companies. Under the terms of the agreement, the Spac sponsors have agreed to performance hurdles tied to the founder equity and lock-up periods running from one to three years. 

Altman “recused himself from all negotiations between the parties, and from all discussions and decisions of both the Oklo and AltC boards involving the transaction”, said a spokesperson for AltC.

The deal is expected to provide the California-based group with $500mn, so long as shareholders do not redeem their shares. Oklo plans to use the funds for its nuclear energy production, scheduled to go to market in about four years’ time, as well as constructing a fuel recycling facility set to begin in the “early 2030s”. 

Altman and Klein, a serial Spac sponsor who has taken public companies such as electric-car maker Lucid and healthcare provider Multiplan, founded AltC in July 2021. The announcement of a deal with Oklo comes as a two-year deadline to find a target or return cash to shareholders was approaching. 

Spacs, or blank-cheque companies, raise money on the stock market and use the cash to invest in a private company, thereby taking it public. They boomed during the pandemic, raising hundreds of billions of dollars from investors. They have since fallen out of favour because of poor performance and misaligned incentives that had encouraged backers to find deals at any cost. 

Oklo forms part of Altman’s sprawling network of start-ups, many in fringe fields which he anticipates will enter the mainstream. 

The OpenAI co-founder and former president of start-up incubator Y Combinator also helped to set up Worldcoin, which uses iris-scanning technology to create a secure global cryptocurrency. He is a big investor in a nuclear fusion company called Helion, where he was appointed chair in 2015.

Altman has repeatedly stated in interviews that he holds no equity in OpenAI — excluding a small stake via Y Combinator from the time he was president. That is an unusual arrangement for a founder and would exclude him from directly gaining from the AI company’s dramatic increase in valuation. 

Altman shot to prominence last year after his company rolled out its ChatGPT chatbot. He has invested heavily in AI and clean energy, two technologies he anticipates will change the world over the next decade or so.

He has set aside massive resources within OpenAI to manage “AI systems much smarter than us” and in recent months has been making the case to world leaders including Joe Biden and Rishi Sunak that powerful AI tools can be developed safely.

Asked about the business arrangement at a recent event hosted by Bloomberg in San Francisco, Altman said his role at OpenAI afforded other privileges including an “interesting life, impact, access”.

He added: “I have enough money. I’m going to make way, way more from other investments that I’ve made in the past.”