NuScale Power (NYSE: SMR) has seen its share price fall by 48% in 2026, while fellow small modular reactor developer Oklo (NYSE: OKLO) has shed 51% of its value since January.

The steep declines are striking given that demand for the type of clean, reliable electricity these companies promise to deliver has never been stronger or more urgently sought.

A Bank of America Institute report projects nuclear energy will represent a $10 trillion opportunity over the next two-and-a-half decades, driven largely by the electricity needs of AI-powered data centers.

The report states directly: “Amid surging electricity demand, driven in part by the rise in AI/data centers, nuclear energy offers a potential solution.”

Despite that enormous long-term tailwind, investors have grown impatient waiting for small modular reactor companies to translate ambitious project pipelines into firm, financially binding customer commitments.

NuScale’s chief financial officer has said the company is hoping to close a power purchase agreement with its largest customer, the Tennessee Valley Authority, potentially before the end of 2026.

A signed power purchase agreement would legally commit the Tennessee Valley Authority to purchasing the facility’s power output, effectively unlocking the financing needed to begin construction.

If completed, the planned facility would represent a 6-gigawatt SMR deployment, which would make it the largest such project in the world by a significant margin.

NuScale has disappointed investors in the past, however, meaning a signed agreement this year carries no guarantee and the market is treating the milestone with considerable skepticism.

The central question now hanging over both companies is whether NuScale or Oklo can convert the customers sitting in their project pipelines into long-term, large-scale financial commitments rather than letters of intent or exploratory agreements.

Market participants appear to be waiting precisely for that confirmation before reassigning meaningful value to either stock, making a signed power purchase agreement the single most important near-term catalyst for both companies.

Until that milestone arrives, the gap between the nuclear energy industry’s enormous projected opportunity and the current market valuations of its SMR developers is likely to remain wide.