Good morning,

Timing is everything, and we’re giving you a jumpstart.

Now you can get The Early Bird’s “Stock of the Day” delivered by text before it lands in the newsletter. You’ll be first to see the pick, the story behind it, and both sides of the trade.

Each morning, you'll receive:

Actionable stock picks, hand-selected by MarketBeat's team of expert research analysts.
Headlines and market insights for each selected ticker.
A bull case and a bear case to help inform your next move.
Timely updates and alerts so that you can capitalize quickly on each opportunity.

Now you can move faster and trade smarter.

Click Here to Receive The Early Bird's Stock of the Day

Best regards,

The Early Bird Team

Monday's Bonus Article

Power Hungry: Inside Meta's Huge Investment in a Nuclear Strategy

Author: Jeffrey Neal Johnson. Originally Published: 1/12/2026.

Quick Look

Meta's strategic partnership with Oklo enables the company to develop a dedicated nuclear energy campus that provides a consistent power supply for AI.
Management is utilizing a capital-efficient prepayment model to fund infrastructure construction without taking on new debt or diluting existing shareholders.
Securing a private energy pipeline creates a significant competitive moat by ensuring the reliability required to run advanced agentic artificial intelligence systems.

For the past two years, coverage of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom has focused almost exclusively on silicon chips. Investors have watched as tech-sector giants bought billions of dollars' worth of processors to expand their data centers.

But a new bottleneck has emerged that may be harder to solve than chip shortages: electricity. As AI models evolve from simple chatbots into agentic systems that run continuously, they will demand more power than the current U.S. electrical grid can reliably supply.

BREAKING: 4,400 Starlink satellites repositioned - why now? (Ad)

SpaceX just announced it is rapidly repositioning 4,400 Starlink satellites into lower Earth orbit. While the official explanation points to safety and debris concerns, the move comes days after China labeled Starlink a national security threat, raising serious questions about what's really happening behind the scenes.

If this escalation in space is an early warning signal, most investors won't react until markets already feel the impact. One analyst has updated his playbook for how to protect capital if geopolitical tensions accelerate.

See the full briefing and his 3-step plan here

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) has moved aggressively to address this challenge. In the first weeks of January 2026, the company entered into a definitive agreement with Oklo Inc. (NYSE: OKLO) to develop a large nuclear power campus. The deal represents a strategic shift toward vertical integration: by securing its own power supply, Meta insulates itself from future grid instability and price volatility, signaling that energy independence is a requirement for its AI growth plans.

Solving the Puzzle: The Shift to Baseload Power

The partnership with Oklo is an industrial-scale infrastructure project in Pike County, Ohio focused on deploying Oklo's Aurora powerhouses — advanced fast-fission reactors that support nuclear fuel recycling, an advantage over traditional reactors. The project targets up to 1.2 gigawatts (GW) of capacity.

To put that scale in perspective: 1 GW is roughly equivalent to the energy required to power about 900,000 homes. Meta is effectively commissioning a utility-scale plant dedicated to its operations.

The location is strategic. Pike County is near Meta's Prometheus supercluster and other regional data centers, reducing long-distance transmission, energy loss, and reliance on congested public lines.

Many investors ask why technology companies don't rely on wind and solar, which are often cheaper to build and deploy.

The answer is in the physics of AI. Data centers running inference and training workloads operate at full capacity continuously and need baseload power — a steady, constant supply that never turns off.

Intermittency issues: Solar panels don't generate at night, and wind turbines stop when the weather is calm.
Storage costs: Battery storage remains expensive at the scale required to power large data centers for extended periods.
The nuclear solution: Nuclear provides the reliability of coal or natural gas without the carbon emissions or the same regulatory and supply-chain headwinds associated with fossil fuels.

Securing baseload power through Oklo positions Meta to achieve the high uptime required for its AI products. That reliability is essential for future offerings from Meta Superintelligence Labs and for deploying advanced AI agents to enterprise customers.

Spending for Survival: How Meta Funds Infrastructure

Transitioning to an AI-first company comes with a steep price tag. In the third quarter of 2025 alone, Meta reported capital expenditures (CapEx) of $19.37 billion. The company's full-year 2025 spending forecast was $70 billion to $72 billion, and 2026 guidance is expected to be even higher. Those numbers have worried some investors concerned about efficiency and profit margins.

But a closer look at the Oklo deal shows a calculated use of capital. Meta is using a prepayment model: rather than taking on interest-bearing debt, it is deploying cash reserves — reported at $44.45 billion in the most recent quarter — to provide upfront funding for construction.

This structure offers two bullish signals:

Balance-sheet efficiency: It lets Meta secure essential assets without leveraging its balance sheet or issuing new stock.
Cost certainty: By funding construction, Meta gains priority access to the power and locks in energy costs for decades, while competitors remain exposed to volatile spot prices.

During the Q3 2025 earnings call, CFO Susan Li emphasized that infrastructure capacity is central to realizing AI opportunities. Viewed this way, the rising expenditures are less a recurring cost and more an entry fee for the next decade of technology — akin to the up-front investments in railroads or fiber networks that created durable competitive advantages.

Building a Private Grid: A 6.6 GW Energy Pipeline

The Oklo agreement is one piece of a broader energy strategy. Meta has secured an energy pipeline of up to 6.6 GW through partnerships with firms such as Vistra (NYSE: VST) — which extends the life of existing nuclear plants for near-term reliability — and TerraPower, which is developing next-generation reactors. Diversifying partners helps mitigate the risk of delays in any single project.

The timeline for Oklo creates a multi-year horizon: the first reactors are expected to come online around 2030. While that may seem distant, it aligns with forecasts that parts of the U.S. grid will face capacity shortages by 2030 as AI demand combines with growth in electric vehicles and manufacturing.

That dynamic can create a meaningful moat. Companies relying on the public spot market for electricity may face rationing, throttling, or extreme prices during peak demand. Meta's committed portfolio of nuclear assets would give it a sustained operational advantage.

The infrastructure also underpins Meta's software ambitions. After acquiring the AI startup Manus, Meta is advancing agentic AI — software that autonomously performs complex tasks. Those agents require constant, uninterrupted inference computing; a power interruption, even for a few seconds, could disrupt millions of active agents. Controlling the power source helps Meta deliver the reliability needed to market premium enterprise services.

The Long Game: From Social Media to Industry Titan

Meta Platforms is evolving. While it remains a social media company in public perception, its capital allocation increasingly resembles that of an industrial infrastructure company.

The Oklo partnership confirms management views energy as a strategic asset to develop rather than simply buy on the open market.

For investors, the large CapEx outlays can be seen as buying long-term insurance against grid failure. As AI models grow in size and complexity, the ability to power them will determine market leadership. By vertically integrating into energy production, Meta is de-risking its long-term future.

The payoff may be years away, but the strategy builds a foundation for sustained growth that is less dependent on public utility constraints. The stock's valuation is increasingly supported by tangible energy assets and the operational advantages they provide.