Oklo, a nuclear fission startup backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, will be going public via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) that Altman co-founded. It's coming at a time when many SPACs are still in limbo. Yahoo Finance Markets Reporter Jared Blikre reports on the deal and the state of the SPAC market.
Video Transcript
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SEANA SMITH: The nuclear power startup backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is going public via SPAC, the company, Oklo, valued at nearly $1 billion. Jared Blikre is at the New York Stock Exchange with a closer look at the state of the IPO market and the performance of SPACs. And we'll see whether or not Oklo is really going to test, I guess, investor appetite for SPACs, which we have fallen out of favor now for quite some time.
JARED BLIKRE: Yeah, Seana. Oklo coming to market is a really special deal, not only because it's a SPAC, but because the target company is affiliated with the original company that raised the money. So that would be Sam Altman. He is one of the founders of bolt and, of course, he's better known for OpenAI founder there and the ChatGPT that has captured headlines and imaginations, including mine, but I digress.
Let's go to the YFI Interactive because I have some interesting stats on the entire market, then we'll go back to Sam Altman's deal here. But we're sitting on about 1,200 deals and the total size of the US stock market is about $310 billion. You notice about half of those-- $138 billion-- those are still seeking a target. And that's a problem because a lot of these companies were raising money 2 years ago or just beginning in 2 years ago in 2021.
They have 18 to 24 months, sometimes a little bit longer to find a deal. They're running up against that deadline. They don't find it, investors want their money-- investors have to get their money back. And in addition, some investors have been clawing back their money anyway, leaving some of the deals in limbo. And of the deals, 324 are completed-- that's about $92 billion. That's a 3 out of 10 I would say. 30% is not a big number.
$45 billion have been liquidated, that is a huge amount. Those are absolute failures. That means that the company could not find a target company to finally come to market with to list. Pending that would be including Sam Altman's deal, that's about $30 billion. So altogether, this is really a market that has been decimated.
Now, I'll go back to Sam Altman's deal right here and I'm going to show you the entire price history. This came to market at $10 a share. You can see it's at $10.39. It's fluctuated above and below, but pretty much in a narrow band there. And indeed, we're knocking on the door. He's knocking on the door of that 24-month-- 2-year time limit. So time is of the essence. And you can imagine a lot of these companies wanting to come to market now because the market was so not only decimated, obliterated last year. There was no IPO market that was functioning last year.
A previous guest brought up Cava Group. I'm just going to show you a quick chart of that. They came to market only a few weeks ago. I was here at the New York Stock Exchange. It was a big production. Most people have probably seen here in years. This is an IPO that was very successful, at least by the technicals. Came to market at $22 a share, that's what they sold to investors. Now trading at $45. And you can see just a few days ago, it actually undercut its opening day price.
So IPOs can be rather tricky to trade here. SPACs a little bit more tricky. And we're going to have to see how this one shakes out. But there's definitely going to be coming-- a lot more deals are going to be coming to the market this year.
- All right, all right, Jared Blikre, thanks so much for the latest from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
