A $12 Billion Window Into AI’s Race for Power
NRG Energy’s deal for gas-fired plants acknowledges the difficulty of building enough capacity to meet Big Tech’s demands.
Need for speed.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
The artificial intelligence arms race has prompted a contest for America’s power plants. NRG Energy Inc.’s acquisition of a gas-fired fleet comes a few months after Constellation Energy Corp.’s even bigger deal for Calpine Corp. US power generation deals announced through mid-May add up to $51 billion, more than in any entire year this century save one.
NRG’s offers a $12 billion proof point that Big Tech’s datacenter boom, among other things, demands vast quantities of power. It also underscores a related point: History shows the US will struggle to build the plants required to generate that power.