Should You Forget NuScale Power and Buy This Nuclear Stock Instead?

It's not hard to predict massive upside potential for NuScale Power (NYSE: SMR) stock. After a sharp correction, the company's market cap is now below $4 billion. Yet some experts believe NuScale Power -- a leading nuclear stock focused on small modular reactors, or SMRs -- is chasing a $10 trillion global opportunity.

I recently outlined several growth catalysts that could revive NuScale Power's stock price in 2026. But the biggest profit potential will accrue for investors that remain patient for the long term. Adoption of SMR technology is still in its infancy. It could one day become a trillion-dollar market.

NuScale Power, however, isn't alone. There's another SMR stock I've been keeping my eye on. And this SMR stock could be superior to NuScale Power in one critical way.

NuScale Power is very different than Oklo

NuScale Power is one of the most popular SMR stocks on the market today. But fellow SMR innovator Oklo (NYSE: OKLO) is actually valued at a premium. Both companies are largely pre-revenue. But Oklo's market cap currently hovers around $11 billion -- nearly three times the size of NuScale Power.

Why does Oklo trade at such a big premium? There are a few factors at play here, but all of those factors come back to one event: Sam Altman joining the company as its chairman in 2015.

Altman is most famously known as the CEO of ChatGPT, one of the largest artificial intelligence (AI) businesses in the world. When you dig deeper, it's no surprise that he took a leading role in helping Oklo develop its technology, go public, and start to expand its pipeline of potential customers.

Its pipeline of potential customers, it turns out, is dominated by AI start-ups and data center companies looking to serve those AI start-ups with compute capacity. "There are huge growth opportunities ahead," Altman wrote in a past investor letter.

Data centers expect to double their energy needs by 2030 to meet growing demand from AI applications. One of Oklo's founders recently revealed that around 80% of customer inquiries come from data center operators.

Image source: Getty Images.

Oklo's SMR plants are purposely designed to be small, between 15 megawatts and 50 megawatts. NuScale Power's SMR designs, meanwhile, are currently sized at roughly 77 megawatts. That sizing difference is a big deal, and it reveals a lot about each company's strategy.

NuScale Power's SMR designs are bigger because, in general, the company is targeting utility-scale deployments. Its deal with ENTRA1 and TVA, for example, calls for a complete project that can generate 6 gigawatts of power.

Oklo's designs are much more targeted to individual applications, often delivering a sub-gigawatt power supply to customers. This makes it a much cleaner fit for direct adoption from AI data centers versus selling into utility-scale electricity grids.

Both NuScale Power and Oklo are promising SMR stocks. And it's reasonable to invest in both if you're bullish on SMR stocks in general. But make no mistake: Each company's approach to SMR designs and deployments is very different. Invest accordingly.

Ryan Vanzo has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends NuScale Power. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.