$67 billion! AI rise drives the largest energy merger and acquisition in U.S. history

Author | Huálín Wǔwáng

Editor | Jìng Yǔ

If a few years ago someone told me that AI would ultimately reshape the U.S. power landscape, you probably wouldn’t take it seriously. After all, we’re talking about software, algorithms, model parameters—things that sound unrelated to power plants.

But on May 18, 2026, that perception was completely shattered.

NextEra Energy announced it would acquire Dominion Energy for $67 billion, setting a record for the largest utility merger in U.S. history.

This number is shocking enough, but what’s more concerning is the logic behind it—the driving force behind this deal isn’t traditional energy strategy, but the insatiable hunger of global AI data centers for electricity.

01 Invisible “Computing Power Vessels”

To understand this merger, you first need to know a place—Northern Virginia, around Loudoun County, known in the industry as “Data Center Alley,” the data center corridor.

This area hosts the highest density of data centers worldwide, with a large number of servers from AWS, Microsoft, Google, Meta hidden in this seemingly ordinary land. It’s estimated that about 70% of global internet traffic passes through here daily. Dominion Energy is the main power supplier for this region.

Dominion holds over 51 GW of data center contract demand—what does 51 GW mean? It’s roughly equivalent to the capacity of 50 large nuclear power plants, and this number continues to grow. The load in Virginia’s DOM region is projected to increase by 121% by 2045.

This is the core reason why NextEra is willing to spend $67 billion—not just to buy a traditional power company, but to acquire the most scarce resource in the AI era—the “power supply rights” close to the core of computing power.

The market has already priced AI chips over the past two years, and now it’s starting to price the power grid.

02 Struggling Power Grid

If you look at this merger within the timeline of the past year, you’ll see it’s not an isolated event but the latest link in a chain reaction.

Rewind to 2025, and the IEA’s data already issued a warning.

In 2025, global data center electricity demand surged by 17%, while overall global electricity demand grew only 3%. The growth of AI-specific data centers far outpaced the market, racing ahead alone. The IEA predicts that by 2030, global data center power consumption will double from 415 TWh in 2024 to about 945 TWh—most of this 530 TWh increase is due to AI training and inference workloads.

In 2025, the five tech giants’ capital expenditures exceeded $400 billion, a large portion of which went into data center construction, and this figure is expected to grow another 75% in 2026.

The power grid is beginning to buckle.

Just two days before the announcement of this merger, on May 16, a report from Monitoring Analytics revealed an unsettling reality: the electricity prices in the U.S.’s largest power market, PJM Interconnection, experienced an “irreversible” surge of up to 76%. PJM covers over ten states including Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, precisely the most AI infrastructure-dense region.

The report’s wording is rare, using the term “irreversible.” It’s not just about adjustable price fluctuations but indicates a fundamental change in the supply-demand structure of electricity.

Earlier, at the end of 2025, Virginia’s northern region had already undergone a real stress test of the power grid. Voltage fluctuations caused 60 data centers to disconnect simultaneously, instantly producing a surplus of 1,500 MW of electricity—this energy oscillation reminded everyone how fragile AI infrastructure’s impact on grid stability is and how demanding the power supply needs are.

03 NextEra’s Bet

NextEra is not an ordinary traditional power company. It is the largest wind and solar power generator in the U.S., with deep experience in building and operating renewable energy infrastructure. This acquisition of Dominion is more than just a scale expansion.

Combining NextEra’s clean energy and energy storage capabilities with Dominion’s market position in the data center corridor is where the true strategic value of this deal lies.

Jigar Shah, former loan program director at the Department of Energy, straightforwardly believes that applying NextEra’s energy storage expertise to Virginia’s data center load “could be transformative”— because data centers need not only electricity but stable, predictable power, ideally stored during low-demand periods.

NextEra is betting that AI computing demand will not stop.

From current investment trends, this bet isn’t radical. Through a “large load tariff” mechanism, major electricity users (i.e., data centers) will directly participate in infrastructure financing, meaning NextEra’s future expansion of transmission lines and power plants can partly shift the capital burden onto tech companies—rather than being borne solely by utilities.

Of course, regulatory challenges are also looming.

Acquiring Dominion means NextEra will become a cross-state power giant, likely facing strict scrutiny from state utility commissions. Consumer advocacy groups like Clean Virginia have already issued warnings, calling for “the strictest review” of the deal, concerned about the concentration of control over Virginia’s power grid.

04 Who Pays the Electricity Bill?

When AI is wildly consuming power resources and electricity prices soar, who ultimately pays for the rising costs? This might be the most important question behind this earth-shaking acquisition.

Building power infrastructure costs money, and these costs eventually get embedded into electricity prices. Some U.S. utility companies have already started using “construction financing” mechanisms, allowing consumers to be charged before projects are completed. In other words, residents are paying for data center infrastructure before they even enjoy any additional power.

PowerLines’ analysis provides a startling figure: AI-driven power infrastructure investments could cost residential consumers about $700 billion, gradually passed on through rising electricity bills.

$700 billion. This is on the same scale as the capital expenditure of tech companies, but the flow is entirely different. The $400 billion spent by tech firms brings shareholder returns, model capabilities, and corporate competitive advantages; whereas the costs borne by consumers only show up as a rising electricity bill curve.

There’s a structural unfairness embedded in this logic—written into this merger, and amplified across the entire wave of AI infrastructure investment.

Data centers are private assets, and the economic benefits of AI are concentrated in tech companies and their shareholders. But the grid that supports all this is a public infrastructure, with construction and maintenance costs shared by all users. This isn’t a new problem, but AI has magnified it to an unprecedented scale.

The $67 billion acquisition makes the logic of industry consolidation clear for the first time: AI prosperity isn’t just happening inside data centers; it extends along the cables into the grid, into utility company assets and liabilities, and ultimately into every ordinary household’s electricity bill.

This merger isn’t the end. Given the current pace of AI computing expansion, it’s likely just the beginning—the reshaping of the power landscape has only just begun.