Meta’s Power Play: AI Expansion Deal Sparks Nuclear Stock Surge
Silicon Valley just placed a massive bet on the future of energy—and it's glowing.
### The AI Power Crunch Goes Critical
Meta's latest move to fuel its artificial intelligence ambitions isn't just another server farm deal. It's a direct line to the nuclear industry, sending uranium miners and reactor builders into a frenzy. The tech giant's insatiable appetite for compute is colliding with the grid's limitations, forcing a high-stakes pivot to the only power source dense enough to keep the AI revolution humming.
### Watts Over Algorithms
Forget software updates—the real bottleneck for the next generation of large language models is the electrical socket. Training a single advanced AI model can consume more power than a small town uses in a year. Meta's deal essentially signals that renewable energy, for all its virtues, can't keep pace with the exponential demands of data centers. The market got the memo instantly, rerouting capital from cloud software to uranium enrichment.
### A Cynical Take from the Trading Floor
It's the ultimate hedge: betting on the machines that will automate finance, by buying the stocks that power the machines. Wall Street analysts are already drafting reports on 'fission-based compute yield'—a fancy term for realizing that in the 21st century, energy might be a better investment than intelligence.
The glow-up is real. As AI models get smarter, their energy needs get dumber—simple, massive, and unstoppable. Meta just showed its hand, and the entire market is now playing a different game: follow the watts.
Meta deal brings nuclear power to the U.S. power grid
Meta said the new deals will reinforce the U.S. nuclear power supply, adding firm and reliable nuclear power to the grid. The company also noted that the initiative will support both new and existing jobs in building and operating U.S. power plants.
Meanwhile, Vistra disclosed that power from the three power plants in Beaver Valley, Pennsylvania, as well as Davis-Besse and Perry in Ohio, will run through the mid-Atlantic grid for all electricity consumers. Jesse Jenkins, an assistant professor of engineering at Princeton University focusing on energy systems, observed that it WOULD be difficult to bring Prometheus online without a new source of power. He noted that electricity rates would only increase across the mid-Atlantic grid without the new power sources.
The company also pointed out that the deals with Meta provided it with certainty to request federal regulators for the reactors’ 20-year license renewals. Joe Kaplan, Meta’s chief global relations officer, said the nuclear deals make his company one of the largest corporate consumers of nuclear power in U.S. history.
“This commitment from Meta provides Vistra the certainty needed to invest in these plants and communities and bring new nuclear generation online for the grid — through uprates at our existing plants.”
–Jim Burke, CEO at Vistra
Meanwhile, Urvi Parekh, Meta’s head of global energy, added that his company’s investment in nuclear power brings in enough reliable power for its AI goals.
Vistra and Oklo stocks skyrocket following Meta deal
Vistra’s stock jumped 10.5% (+15.77) to $166.38 in Friday’s stock market after the Meta deal was announced. The stock had dipped 2.6% to 150.60 on Thursday before jumping 16% in Friday’s premarket trade.
The S&P 500 stock also outperformed the broader S&P 500 index with a small margin, hitting an intraday high of $174.74 and a low of $166.67. The spiking stock prices also saw the daily trading volume jump from 6.87 million on January 8 to 14.25 million on January 9. Vistra stock also has a Composite Rating of 17 out of 99, a Relative Strength Rating of 19, and an ESP Rating of 12.
Meanwhile, Oklo’s stock closed 7.9% higher at $105.32 in Friday’s stock market session after jumping 16% in Friday’s premarket action. However, the stock opened Friday’s market 50% lower from its $193.84 high in October 2025. The Oklo stock gained 238% in 2025.
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