AI’s power hunger is turning electric utilities into Wall Street growth stocks — and customers may pay the price

A corporate merger that would form the largest electric utility in the United States is underway. It’s just one of many recent utility mergers and acquisitions as electric utilities enter a period of rapid growth. On May 18, 2026, Next Era Energy announced it would buy Dominion Energy for US$66.8 billion. What’s driving this deal and others like it is not an increase in residential electricity demand. Rather, it’s based on rising demand for power to data centers for artificial intelligence systems and a desire to increase corporate profits. As a scholar of the electricity industry, I seek to understand how and why the electricity grid and the companies that run it are changing. In my book “Brokers of Power” I explain that a primary force in the industry is not the desire to improve service for the rate-paying public, nor even for industries that want to use more electricity. Rather, stock market investors and Wall Street businesses are changing how electric utilities make money in the U.S. A power substation serves the NextEra Energy corporate headquarters in Juno, Fla. Marco Bello/Getty Images A variety of electricity suppliers In every state, the majority of companies that distribute and deliver electricity to homes and businesses over the wires are regulated monopolies with specific geographic service areas. But where that electricity comes from varies widely. Many cities, some quite large, get their power from a municipally owned utility. Many rural areas get theirs from membership cooperatives. These organizations are nonprofits whose general goals are to serve their customers with reliable, affordable power. However, around 70% of U.S. households get their electricity from private companies. Most are controlled by large holding companies, such as NextEra Energy, which customers know through subsidiaries such as Florida Power and Light and Dominion Energy, which operates local subsidiaries in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Utah. These companies’ ma