A full decade before Sam Altman released ChatGPT and became the most famous human in technology, he was running Y Combinator — the world's most prestigious startup accelerator. As YC's president, Altman shepherded companies like Cruise, Flexport, and Scale AI from scrappy garage ideas into multi-billion-dollar juggernauts.
But there was one startup he believed would be bigger than all of them. So much so that after the company graduated from YC, Altman didn't just wave goodbye and move on to the next batch. He became chairman of the board. He led their next investment round. He put millions of his own money into it. And then, in 2024, he put his reputation on the line to take it public via SPAC — a financial vehicle so thoroughly associated with fraud and disappointment that doing it voluntarily is either an act of supreme confidence or clinical insanity.
That company is Oklo. Its stock is up 500% in the past year and 200% in 2025 alone. It has never generated a dollar of revenue. It has never built a product. It has not yet been approved to build that product. And its pitch to the world is this: we can construct nuclear reactors the size of a hot tub that are self-sustaining, physically incapable of melting down, require zero human operators, and will run for twenty years without refueling.
This is either the most important energy company of the 21st century or the most elaborately funded science fair project in financial history. Let's figure out which.