(Bloomberg) -- Shares of Oklo Inc., a developer of advanced nuclear systems backed by Sam Altman, plunged Friday in its debut after merging with a blank-check company sponsored by the OpenAI chief executive and serial dealmaker Michael Klein.

Oklo tumbled 54% to $8.45 apiece in its debut on the New York Stock Exchange after completing a deal with AltC Acquisition Corp., which delivered more than $306 million in proceeds to the combined firm, according to a statement. The rough debut came as more than 25 million shares changed hands, more than 13 times what’s been typical over the past month, with trading being halted for volatility at least three times in the first hour.

The merger with the special-purpose acquisition company was announced in July and valued the firm at about $850 million. Retail investors then flocked to the stock, fueling a rough 75% rally in the lead up to Friday’s debut, with shares holding above the $10 the SPAC was offered at. The stock’s drop cut the company’s valuation to roughly $718 million, and took it out of the running to join the year’s best-performing de-SPACs, a group that includes Donald Trump’s social media startup.

Oklo is part of a wave of companies pursuing new reactor technologies. The big, conventional nuclear plants that are widely used today typically have about 1,000 megawatts of capacity, enough for hundreds of thousands of homes. Oklo is developing one that’s much smaller, just 15 megawatts. It’s talking to oil companies about using its systems at remote drilling sites, and is making plans to install reactors at an Ohio industrial site.

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Investors gave the deal a warm reception prior to the trading. While the median de-SPAC completed this year saw 99% of the initial pool of cash pulled from the merger, AltC received more than $300 million in proceeds out of the original $500 million raised.

“The $300 million gets us quite far,” Jacob DeWitte, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Oklo, said in an interview. “We don’t necessarily see a need to go back to the market from an equity perspective except for very new, high value-add things that we might pursue from an infrastructure perspective like fuel recycling, and things like that.”

The surge in AI and other computing is driving a boom in power-hungry data centers, and that’s helping boost demand for electricity for the first time in decades. OpenAI’s Altman and Oklo executives say small nuclear plants and data centers are an ideal pairing.

A key hurdle, however, will be getting an Oklo reactor up and running. The company has said it expects to see its Aurora reactor in service before the end of the decade, but it still needs approval from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

“We’ve got regulatory work ahead of us for the next couple of years before we really transition into the heavier capital outlays for some of equipment that we’ll be investing in as part of the plant and building out the plant,” DeWitte said.

Promotion

The management team’s ability to promote the company on a podcast and at conferences including South By Southwest in Austin as it unveiled non-binding deals with the likes of Diamondback Energy Inc. was reminiscent of the go-go days for SPACs when executives would interact with investors to discuss their business ambitions. The deals, along with Altman’s role as an investor and board member, drove AltC to be one of the best performing blank checks prior to this week’s deal close.

“Getting out there, helping explain what we’re doing, having the business develop in parallel, all of that was pretty advantageous for us,” DeWitte said. He mentioned the ability to explain Oklo’s more complex technology and touted the ability to have “a little more time” to find the right partners and the right structure.

The company’s debut comes amid a tepid revival for the blank-check industry, as serial sponsors test the waters and a string of deals with high-profile backers like Altman and Klein are completed.

After the completion, Oklo’s board includes Altman as chairman, alongside Klein, a former Citigroup Inc. banker and a SPAC veteran, Lieutenant General (Ret.) John Jansen, former Black Hills Corp. Chief Financial Officer Richard Kinzley and Liberty Energy Inc. CEO Chris Wright.

SPACs have mostly fallen out of favor after a boom in 2020 and 2021 went bust, with dozens of companies filing for bankruptcy as others were acquired at fire-sale prices. More than one-fifth of the nearly 500 SPAC deals that have closed since 2019 are trading below $1 each, a greater than 90% plunge.

(Updates with closing pricing throughout.)

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