Is TerraPower the Next Oklo? Inside Bill Gates' Nuclear Bet.

Bill Gates has poured more than $1 billion of his own money into TerraPower, the nuclear company he co-founded, and his bet is finally rising out of the Wyoming ground. With artificial intelligence (AI) supercharging demand for round-the-clock clean power, nuclear has become the hottest corner of the energy market.

So investors are asking the natural question: Is TerraPower the next great nuclear stock -- the next Oklo (NYSE: OKLO)? The short answer is that you can't buy privately held TerraPower. But two publicly traded companies let you play the very same bet.

Inside Bill Gates' bet

TerraPower's flagship is the Natrium reactor, a 345-megawatt sodium-cooled design paired with a molten salt storage system that can surge output to 500 megawatts when the grid needs it. In April, the company broke ground in Kemmerer, Wyoming, on what is set to be the first utility-scale advanced nuclear plant in the country. It even secured the first construction permit the U.S. nuclear regulator has ever issued for a commercial reactor that is not a traditional water-cooled design.

It is a genuinely historic project, expected to produce its first power by about 2030. The catch for investors is simple: Because TerraPower is privately held by Gates and a handful of partners, only they will reap any upside.

That is where Oklo and NuScale Power (NYSE: SMR) come in. Both are publicly traded specialists in small modular reactors (SMRs), pursuing the same opportunity that TerraPower represents.

Image source: Getty Images.

Oklo is building its Aurora micro reactor to power data centers and industrial sites, targeting its first deployment around the end of 2027. It sits on roughly $2.5 billion in cash with no debt, and it recently signed a deal to supply Meta Platforms with a 1.2-gigawatt system in Ohio.

NuScale, meanwhile, holds a unique edge as the only SMR company with a design certified by U.S. regulators, and it is pushing to have its first modules ready for production this year, with commercial deployment expected by about 2030.

Why nuclear suddenly matters

The reason these once-obscure names have soared is AI. Data centers need enormous amounts of reliable, always-on electricity, and the grid is straining to keep up.

Nuclear offers exactly that: dense, carbon-free power. SMRs promise to deliver it in smaller, factory-built units that can be sited near the data centers themselves. Hyperscalers are already signing deals, governments are offering support, and suddenly the "new AI trade" looks a lot like an old energy source reborn.

Temper the excitement, though. Oklo and NuScale are largely pre-revenue, with their first commercial reactors still several years away, somewhere between 2027 and 2030. Their stocks have surged on promise rather than profit, they carry rich valuations, and they face real regulatory and construction risk.

TerraPower faces the same timeline, just without a way for the public to invest. Buying any nuclear stock today is a bet on a future that has not arrived yet.

The takeaway for investors

So is TerraPower the next Oklo? Not exactly, because it is not a stock at all. It is Bill Gates' private groundbreaking wager on advanced nuclear power, and its progress is worth watching as a signal for the industry as a whole. If you want to actually invest in the theme, Oklo and NuScale are the investable businesses, each offering real exposure to the AI-driven nuclear boom.

My honest read is that this is a promising long-term trend still in its earliest innings, so I would treat these as small, speculative positions rather than sure things, and let the reactors prove themselves before betting the farm. The nuclear renaissance looks real. It's just going to take years, not quarters, to arrive.

Micah Zimmerman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Meta Platforms. The Motley Fool recommends NuScale Power. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.